There is no proper, acceptable commercial or technical reason that any NGN other than 09 should be charged at a higher rate than the normal GN rate of the intitial carrying telco, if revenue sharing (use as covert Premium numbers) were abolished. Diversion (simple or intellegent) can be accomplished very easily by modern digital exchanges, and any resulting micro-cost is fixed, not a call-duration related cost as those with a vested interest in the current regime of abuses attempt to claim. (The only real instance in which any true duration-related cost occurs is where there is International diversion, but in any case there is no acceptable reason that the caller should bear this cost without specific agreement in any case. The called party requiring the International diversion should pay those duration-related costs, as with a mobile telephone when receiving calls from the UK whilst abroad. The caller does not pay the additional costs then.) Any transitionary costs within particular routeings should be accounted for between telcos on a similar non-accounted algebraic basis to that now used by car insurers to settle claims between themselves, on the basis of paying for their own insured's losses, even when fault is not with their insured. The whole point of this is that statistically over a large period any imbalances tend to cancel out, and the costs of accounting, settling and legislation are eliminated by this approach, which actually reduces the insurer's overall costs and would similarly reduce each telco's overall costs.

This is the simplest solution to all of the current problems for consumers, and at the end of the day implementing this type of approach would avoid any need for any so-called (misnomered and deliberately misleading) micro-payments between telcos. There really is not any need for this in a properly configured structure. This then eliminates any opportunity for abuses with revenue being shared despite an intent to prohibit it, as has been allowed in the reversion with 070 PNS.

Everyone seems to have lost sight of the fact that it was the various forms of local diversion functionality which led to the idea (suspect in my view) of NTS in the first place. BT wanted another gambit to milk revenue out of the system.

Diversion may be accomplished, including intelligent diversion, locally without any NTS. In fact in 1981 BT was offered an intelligent local call processing solution which included engaged call processing with international numbers LOCALLY; and they eventually rejected that and decided to implement a similar part function in exchanges so as to be able to milk the system more and be able to control and rip-off the consumer. In fact still BT do not yet offer, nor does any other telco in my knowledge yet offer, international engaged call processing, which was included in that local solution. BT provides it within the UK for UK calls only still now, almost 25 years later. This is progress?

I repeat there is no justifiable technical or commercial reason that any NTS call (other than 09) should cost any caller more than a normal GN call at the initiating caller's duration rate. Of course, if the system were restored to sanity and an equitable position, making the interests of the consumer paramount, there would be some enterprises which have capitalised on the current distorted coherence and ineffective regulation, which would go to the wall so to speak. This is purely because they have been allowed to hold the consumer to ransom due to ineffective regulation.

I don't believe that the consumer would miss any of them. I for one certainly would not!

That is the whole point SAlbrow. That is exactly what we object to. These calls may be free to you but they are much more expensive for consumers.

In addition, frankly if you use NGNs and have not negotiated a revenue share with your providers you must be unaware commercially, in my opinion. If you are going to use NGNs at all you should have revenue share whilst it is still permitted. Otherwise you are loosing a contribution to your business profits which you could have had, and which is instead just going to the telcos to boost their profits. That doesn't mean I agree with revenue sharing - quite the reverse. But whilst we consumers continue to be exploited I would rather see it going to you than to the telcos who have perpetrated this fraud on a huge scale.

Quote:

There was - 0845 and 0870 - oh g*d I feel a head ache coming on Heeeeeeeeeelp

It's interesting to read about transfering calls from location to location being the excuse for a higher than geographical charge on these 0845 and 0870 numbers. Equally, it's interesting that every post here seems to be suggesting denial of the fact that the destination company is receiving a proportion of the revenue from those 0845 and 0870 calls in almost every case.

There are any number of companies today offering these non geographical numbers as a source of income. There is no mention of switching and the like.

I have just added a series of 0870 numbers, all relating to one geographical number, to the site list, and these numbers all terminate in the same building.

Let's not be altruistic or make feeble excuses. These are money makers. With many 0870 numbers offering 6p per minute to the owner of the number, £3.60 per hour for doing nothing isn't a bad rate of return, is it? There is no question of this being to pay staff or anything else; those costs would occur anyway, whatever number was dialled.

One group of numbers which hasn't been covered is the 070 series, some of which are charged at up to 50p per minute. These are sometimes more complex than the others, being personal numbers where switching is often employed. I use an 070 number myself for my fax line, so the faxes go direct to my computer. I hasten to add that I get no share of the money, just the convenience of getting the faxes where I want them.

gdh82 wrote on Dec 11^th, 2005 at 3:07pm:


A Micro Payment is a payment to the TCP - Terminating Call Party - the telecoms service provider who provides various NGN services to the called party including so called Intelligent Call Routing (advanced call diversion patterns)

Revenue Share is a direct transfer out of the Micro Payment money received by the TCP to the Service Provider (this service provider may even be a private individual or it may be a large call centre).

Either way it comes down to the same thing essentially.  Namely the caller paying extra for NGN phone services (including possible call diversion and intelligent call routing) for which the called party should be paying.  The BBC is a classic case where no money is paid to the BBC but where it saves money on its outhgoing call costs and gets a lower service fee from the call centre operator (Capita) than it otherwise would do due to the micro payments to Cable & Wireless and the revenue share to Capita.

These people with 0845 numbers who say I don't get any money from it aren't facing facts that they are receiving for free enhanced call routing facilities that they should be paying a service charge for.  But the fact of the matter is that these call routing facilities are being charged to the caller at ridiculously over the odds and would be far cheaper all round if the called party paid the phone call cost, thus creating a transparent and competitive market where prices were driven down.

Unless a Service Provider is one who receives far more incoming calls than they make outgoing calls (eg BBC, British Airways and Sky) then for most businesses who use 0870 numbers even they lose.  That is because the incoming revenue share they get is far smaller than the extra telecoms costs they have to pay outgoing.

The main people who win from NTS and revenue share are people like Totem Communications, who have responded to the consultation and who on Page 9 in effect admit that their whole business would not exist without these Terminating Call Payments and using revenue share to bribe more and more companies to use NGNs against their own long term interests.

Basically its all a micro payment.  The Revenue Share is the part of the micro payment that is passed on to the called party using the number as a direct bribe to use NGN numbers.  But even when the person or company to whom the phone number directs the calls doesn't receive a revenue share (as with most 0845 numbers apart from ISPs and some 0870 services like fax to email) they are still receiving a service paid for by the caller for which they the called party should be paying extra.

I hope this clarifies matters.

DonQuixote wrote on Dec 12^th, 2005 at 12:35am:
I already do pay for incoming calls to my cellphone and I am quite happy to do so. It makes the system here a significant improvement to that in the UK, and whilst some may be wary of a 'called party pays' model, it does have some significant advantages. Once again, the UK could learn a lot from across the ocean. The cultural shift adopting a similar model, would, I suspect, be too much.