davew wrote on Jan 18
th, 2006 at 11:21am:
I also have line tental with TalkTalk and been able to use the Simplyfone o844 number to make international calls, so it's does seem they haven't blocked these numbers.
They aren't allowed to block so called "dial through" numbers offered by companies like
www.dialaround.co.uk,
www.abroadtel.co.uk ,
www.discountdial.co.uk etc. That would be seen to be a restriction on your telephone service. They are however potentially allowed to charge above the usual call rate for using these numbers, although I suspect that doing so on a landline might be a very hot area of contention if they did so. This is becuase these 0844 and 0871 services are normally ones where the company you are calling sets the price, rather than the company throgh which you make the call.
The snag with these numbers is that you pay a 5p connection fee every time you use them, regardless of whether or not your call is actually connected.
If you go for line rental with a BT competitor they are allowed to stop you from requesting CPS with a competitor (not a totally unreasonable restriction in my opinion) but also to stop you using indirect access codes (unreasonable in my opinion as it means you then totally at the mercy of any odd arbitrary high rates that telco has for calling some destinations).
Chris Rowsell at Ofcom (one of the prople responsible for their review of Wholesale Line Rental) maintains it is EU legisltion that forces Ofcom to make it a condition of Wholesale Line Rental that companies can block indirect access and CPS. Personally I can't imagine what aspect of EU law prevents you from walking out of one shop and buying the same service more cheaply at a shop across the road?
Another way round the CPS and indirect access restriction is to use Voip which comes directly from BT Wholesale and your ISP and your phone company isn't allowed to interfere with that (unless your phone company is also your broadband supplier of course as per Tiscali or BT). I believe your broadband ADSL ISP could restrict use of the Voip ports to access a competitor Voip service but this would I am sure be the subject of a major row if any company dared to do it.
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