Quote:...Of course, of dial-up internet had been given its own separate prefix, then this wouldn't have been an issue. Instead, they preferred to sell such services as being at "local rate".
As always, Oftel (now Ofcom) didn't think to use a special number for dial-up users.
Having scanned the 200+ page (haven't read whole document yet) I can see where Ofcom are coming from with regards to dial-up users and 0845 but I believe they have totally over estimated the costs in migrating over to a 0844 number. 99% of ISP's offer email facilities as well as internet access and therefore they could easily email their customers (most customers would then be informed) and this wouldn't cost that much at all - just the time it takes to write the email because surely they have ways of emailing all customers anyhow. ISP's have no problems e-mailing when they are doing deals/offers, upgrades, etc.
Most customers would be using Windows so therefore they could write a script that would simply add/change the dial-up properties (after closing down any software protection they run to ensure their dial-up number isn't changed to a premium rate number) and manual instructions could also be included in the email.
I definitely don't agree that ISP would need to burn a whole new set of their ISP discs and send them out to existing customers simply because of a number change. I believe it would be OTT and not necessary. All new customers would of course need their ISP disc to be with the new number instead of the old one.
Any ISP customers that have doubts could ring their ISP (probably on an 0870 number) to confirm this.
The problem is there would be a very small percentage of customers that don't read their emails so would not know about the change until they tried to dial-up.
I believe a period of 3months (to 6max) is all that is needed to ensure as many customers as possible were informed and to allow the ISP's to use the rest of their discs. In the meantime CD's sent out could have a small note stating number has changed and how to change it.