Quote:

I don't think that's the case. See Ofcom's guidance on the use of personal numbers here.
Quote:

Dave, sometimes I wonder whether we are describing the same occurrence? You quote from Ofcom's statements: "However, what all Personal Numbering Services have in common is that it must be the called party who decides which destination the 070 number is routed to. Additionally, if the service that is being offered is the facility to be reached at any chosen destination then the End-User must be in charge of changing as well as allocating the destination number. This follows on from Criteria A, above."

Where does it mention any "person in charge"? This seems to be a term you have coined? The reality at present, which is what the scam with 070 PNS is all about, is that legally it is now only intermediaries in the NTS routeing who may receive revenue share, since Oftel banned revenue sharing for the terminating subscriber.

However what is actually occurring is that illegal revenue sharing is being enacted to the real terminating subscriber, who is arranging with the intermediaries to nominate a dummy (friend, associate or colleague) as the recorded terminating subscriber, so that they as an intermediary can take revenue share. In the case of companies like Patientline they are in realitiy intermediaries so they take the lot. It is big money because 070 PNS rates are extremely high.

This is the attraction of 070 PNS abuses. The rates are so high and queuing is allowed. Even some of the international telcos themselves have been ripped off with these - big time! See http://www.fcc.gov/eb/Orders/2004/FCC-04-32A1.html.

So I really do not understand your point?

NGM, you mention:

"The things is that the same scams seem to be operated quite profitably in universities using only 0870 numbers so I really don't see how the extra 070 rake-off can be justified?" The reason is as you observe that the call rates are so high. It is just sheer greed and avarice which is at the root of it. And if course Ofcom play into their hands and   condone it all!

I received the reply from David Stewart:

Dear drrdf3,



I refer to your earlier note to Vicki Nash, who suggested I reply directly.



In summary, I am afraid there may be a misunderstanding here - the consultation you refer to doesn't have any connection to any investigation, open or closed, involving Patientline or any other provider of calls to hospital patients. My apologies for the length of this note but I thought you might find it helpful to have the situation set out clearly.



In fact, the commentary in our guidance on 070 services for calls to hospital patients remains unchanged in the revised guidance.



For example, you can see the old (Jan 04) text here:



http://www.ofcom.org.uk/telecoms/ioi/numbers/num_070_guide#content



If you compare the text of the bullet point in relation to calls to hospital patients in the old and new versions, you can see that it has not changed. This reflects Ofcom's view about the appropriate use of 070 numbers for calls to hospital patients; this is separate (in Ofcom's view) from the question of the prices charged for those services.



The reason for the new 070 consultation is (as we said at the time) to adjust our guidance to give clarity on an issue about the role of service providers and their responsibilities to take reasonable steps to ensure that their customers are using numbers in ways that are consistent with the Numbering Plan. That objective, and the context to it, are set out on our website here:



http://www.ofcom.org.uk/consult/condocs/personal_numbering/#content



To put this in context, this constitutes a minor adjustment, adding text on an issue about which the guidance has previously simply been silent. This guidance explains Ofcom's approach, but doesn't directly affect the legal rights or obligations of any person; those remain as set out in the Numbering Plan and number allocations. There is no statutory requirement for consultation under those circumstances. As you know, Ofcom is committed to transparency and to consulting above and beyond our formal requirements, and therefore, Ofcom elected to conduct a short consultation in any event. (Any contribution you wish to make to that consultation would be welcome). 



Finally, I note that there are two different investigations involving Patientline and it isn’t clear which one you intended to refer to:



The first investigation concerns Patientline's conduct in relation to Competition Act issues (which is considering, amongst other things, the question of whether the 50p constitutes excessive pricing under competition law). This investigation is on-going. As with any open investigation, we have no public comment other than via our Competition Bulletin, available here:



http://www.ofcom.org.uk/bulletins/comp_bull_index/comp_bull_ocases/open_all/cw_8...



The second investigation concerned the use by Patientline of 070 services via a switchboard. That investigation has now closed. It resulted in our determining that the use of such services via a switchboard was inappropriate (a conclusion which is obviously consistent with both the old and new 070 guidance). This was not related in any way to the question of the pricing for incoming (or outgoing) calls - it related simply and exclusively to the use of PINs or switchboards, which we viewed as inconsistent with the requirement for callers to be able to dial directly the person using the 070 number.



The outcome of that investigation was that Ofcom issued a s.94 notice to Patientline requiring them to use 070 numbers in line with our guidance. The recent decision to grant Patientline an extension to the time to comply with this requirement (in a small proportion of the sites) was not related to, and does not affect, the first investigation or Patientline's pricing for any services. Details concerning this investigation, together with the s.94 notice, can be found here:



http://www.ofcom.org.uk/bulletins/comp_bull_index/comp_bull_ccases/closed_all/cw...      



I trust that this provides you with a clear picture of these various activities and the reasons for them. Thanks for the opportunity to clarify the situation.



Regards,



David Stewart

Director of Investigations



david.stewart@ofcom.org.uk








--------------------------------------------------------------------------------


From: Vicki Nash
Sent: 02 November 2005 10:55 AM
To: David Stewart
Subject: FW: Only 2 weeks allowed for Ofcom Consultation to legalise Patientline 50p/min scam



and another

Vicki

You can see at the end that vicki nash has received quite a number of these and is just delegating the task of sending the usual Ofcom boilerplate.

I then received the following reply from David Stewart:

Dear ddrf3,

As you correctly point out, Ofcom’s statutory mission is to act in ways that further the interests of citizens and consumers. I am sorry you feel so strongly that Ofcom isn’t doing so in this instance. We may have to agree to disagree on this point on this occasion.

On the issue at hand, I can only reiterate two points I made in my earlier email, that:

-          the section dealing with use of 070 services for services to hospital patients predate this consultation – a situation you can check for yourself by following the links in my note; and
-          the question of pricing for calls to hospital patients is and remains under active investigation. No decision has been taken by Ofcom in this matter.

I hope this is helpful to you.

Regards,

David Stewart

I then sent the following reply to David Stewart:

Dear Mr. Stewart,

Thank you for your reply to my e-mail of 2nd November 2005. However as before you have again somewhat skilfully avoided answering my original question and the additional question which I raised.

1) Is this proposed change to allow the use of 07 PNS with 070 numbers allocated to hospital patients so that they can have their own number for the duration of their stay (but not where a generic 070 number is used that requires further PINs ....) as stated in this consultation, although 070 PNS was never intended for such a use and is not allowed in the National Telephone Numbering Plan for such a use, in the interest of the Citizen Consumer? The answer is clearly NO (it is not in the interest of the Citizen Consumer). Therefore your claim that " the section dealing with use of 070 services for services to hospital patients predate this consultation" is irrelevant, since it is Ofcom's statutory responsibility to protect the interests of the Citizen Consumer, and Ofcom therefore have a statutory duty in this consultation to over-rule this predated illegal decision. Therefore the proper normal time of 10 weeks should be allowed for this consultation.

2)  Will you please therefore extend this consultation period to allow time for more Citizen Consumers to inform you of their real position, since it is your primary statutory duty to take account of what they state, so that you can be sure what is actually in the interest of the Citizen Consumer?

It seems therefore that by default your answer to Question 1 is "Yes we know that but we are going to do the opposite anyway."

It seems that by default your answer to Question 2 is "Although we know that it is our principal duty to protect the interests of the Citizen Consumer we will not agree to any requests to extend this consultation to the normal period of 10 weeks, because we know that if we do we will receive too many responses from Citizen Consumers stating the opposite of what we want to hear, and that is why we want to guillotine this consultation."

Unless I hear from you that these default answers are incorrect I shall publish this correspondence.

Regards,

drrdf3


As would be expected, he did not reply again, so the default answers are correct, and Ofcom do not intend to take any account of the interests of Citizen Consumers on this issue of 070 PNS abuses and they will not consider extending this consultation period, because they wish to guillotine it through to ensure that their pre-consultation decision already made in advance is implemented.

What I ask you is the point of having a "regulator"?

Hi drrdf

You refer to page 14 of the consultation. This is part of the 'proposed' revised guidelines which is identical, word for word, to the existing guidelines. So which part are you referring to?

Also, the acceptable use of 070 numbers lists these hospital systems in the January 2004 edition, so it appears that this one was 'legalised' a while ago.

Quote:

This is becoming clearer to me now.

So what you're saying is that Ofcom made the changes in January 2004 without consulting. It has decided to make some other changes, namely the insertion of paragraph 6. The changes proposed are to emphasise CP's and re-sellers responsibilities to see that the numbers are used in accordance with the rules, as Mr Stewart points out.

However, this consultation is suposedly for the afforementioned changes, but in revising 'the guidelines' as a whole, that is, by definition, consulting on the entire guidelines document.

I still stand by what I said in reply #24 and consider that this will open the floodgates for these university systems to adopt 070 numbers aswell, and that this contradicts the statement "The end user must be in charge of the destination number".