Wicked wrote on Mar 6^th, 2006 at 4:49pm:

Make sure you have 070 on your list aswell. They cost upto 50p/min.

Wicked wrote on Mar 7^th, 2006 at 9:30am:



070 numbers are personal numbers and can cost that much, try phoning Patientline, 070******* 49p per minute.

Wicked wrote on Mar 7^th, 2006 at 9:30am:


This just serves to illustrate the confusion caused by OfCon - even members of this board are confused by the lumping together of multiple call types and price ranges within a single component of the so-called 'Telephone Numbering Plan'.

kk wrote on Mar 12^th, 2006 at 10:39am:

I can't agree - but I've continued the discussion of the N.American system here, rather than under this topic.

Thanks to an invitation passed on to me by another forum member yesterday afternoon I was able to attend a seminar at Ofcom's riverside palace at Southwark bridge.  This was billed as being a Stakeholder workshop on the invite but when I got there the screens howed Industry Workshop and the list of attendees was all BT, Vodaphone, TalkTalk etc.  I didn't formally tell Ofcom in advance I wanted to attend this meeting as I knew I woul probably be told it was not for Consumers and I just showed up at Ofcom's offices at the appointed hour when on Reception not finding me on their official list of attendees they still gave me a Visitor badge and directed me to the meeting room.  Initially no one from Ofcom I knew was there before the meeting started but when Clive Hillier (Ofcom Competition Partner and Board member) walked in to give his presentation he immediately spotted me sitting quietly and suited in the back of the audience.  This was pretty impressive considering he has only met me once before at the Ofcom Consumer Workshop in November and he spotted me simply while walking up to the front to give his speech.

The presentation began explaining their proposals basically to create the new 03 Countrywide number proposals for NGNs at geographic rates plus to restructure 08 and 09 number classes so the initial 081, 082 etc gives an indication of the likely call cost .  They also plan to do this with 09.  They also plan to allow 07 PNS scam numbers so favoured by Patientline to continue as long as they are renumbered 06.

After Clive Hillier's presentation I rather went to town on the question front and asked how these numbering proposals interfaced with NTS Way Forward and why they weren't part of that consutation. I also asked if Ofcom weren't nw going to backtrack on their proposal to move 0870 to geographic rates and instead expect all ethical 0845 and 0870 users to set up an 03 alternative.  This would mean those who had used 0870 and 0845 for call feature rather than revenu reasons having to adopt new numbers while the 0870 and 0845 scammers remained untouched.

To do Clive Hillier credit he didn't say I had come to the wrong forum or use that as an excuse not to answer but instead said these proposals were in addition to proposing to change 0870 to geographic rates.  So I then said how did that make sense when their own new number plan only listed 080 Free and 08 everything else Chargeable Services and when their own document pointed out that 08 was still very widely identified as being Free calls.   There was then a lot of excuses about Ofcom needing to do the best they could within existing structures without disrupting business too much.  To which I replied that Section 3 (1) of the Communications Act 2003 said that the interests of Citizen Consumers came first/  They ignored that point.

We then went on to a presentation from Ofcom person Steve Unger during which interruptions for questions at any point were allowed.  He gave us some spiel about the new proposals ensuring they woud not run out of 01 or 02 numbers within the lifetime of phone numbers still being used as many corporates would now run their call centres on 03 or revised 08 and handle them increasingly via voip systems at the back end so they didnt require a different real physical phone line and number for each separate call handling position in the call centre.  He also tried to take us through the logic of their 06 proposals which he said were numbers that would be capped at no more than 20p per minute.

I then asked why PNS was still necessary at all and why these companies couldn't be made to either take am 09 or an 03 number depending on whether they wanted their caller to pay for the extra call handling facilities or wanted to pay for them themselves.  I also asked if this meant a Green Light to Patientline remaining in business and if the maximum 20p call rate had been agreed with the Department of Health.  To which basically my question was dodged and the answer was that it was for the Department of Health to reply about Patientline.  At this point some rather haughty and upper class industry person from somewhere like Vodafone asked whether valid though my questions no doubt were if I was at the right forum to raised them.   So once again we see that Ofcom prefers only to meet in person with industry persons where they can all talk industry speak and keeping the telecoms industry profitable.

There was one public spoken senior looking industry chappie in a smart suit who asked Steve Unger why when consumers had asked repeatedly for a call price announcement facility over the years (especially for 07, 09 and 084/7 type calls plus 118 dq calls) Ofcom had never done anything about this and wouldn't  it be better for the industry's reputation if it had.  To which the answer was that Ofcom's surveys showed not much consumer demand and that it was very expensive and difficult for telcos to offer this facility.

The meeting ended shortly afterwards and stranged and I detected an immediate shying away by most telecoms industry persons when i tried to join their little informal chat groups etc.  I did then manage to have a conversation with Steve Unger who said he knew it wasn't as much as we would like but Ofcom couldn't do any more due to the need for its regulatory remedies not to be considered as being disproportionate etc, etc.  I still asked how their dogs breakfast 08 code was better for anytone to which he had no answe

Apologies for various spelling mistakes and typos in above but my one year old HP Pavilion DV1139EA Centrino Notebook turned up its toes on Tuesday evening and appears to have had a total motherboard failure.  So it has now gone off to HP for a repair of up to 2 weeks and meanwhile I am trying to access the internet and access email using a Netgem IPlayer Freeview and Internet/Email tv box.

Unfortunately its only means of navigation around web pages is with the four cursor keys on the keyboard as it has no mouse or touchpad. And it only shows me about a quarter of a web page at once

Really I have posted my message about the Ofcom meeting in the wrong place but I can't cut and paste from one thread to another with the Netgem.  And the front page of this website still refers to the consutation that closed in December instead of this new one.

Anyhow coming back to the Ofcom meeting there were about 33 industry members present and this included 2 from BT and 2 from Kingston Communications.  The rest included C& W, Carphone Warehous, Easynet, NTL, Magrathea Communications, 2 from NTL, Mobile Broadband Group, Teleworst, Opera Telecom, Orange, Quazzle, Redstone, Tiscali, TMobile, Tesco Telecoms, Vodafone, Voicenet, Wanadoo, Zimo, Intellect x 2, Interconnect 3, FCS, CMS and AT & T.

However I see that the Dti and Otelo also had a rep each which rather adds legitimacy to me being there in my local government and SayNoTo0870 hats.

Thanks for the meeting notes NGM.

If I may summarise:

Smoke and mirrors proposals are in hand, various changes will be made, various scams will be allowed to continue with slight variations and the numbering system will be in an even worse mess and completely unintelligible to the public when they've finished messing about with it.