Tanllan wrote on Jun 20
th, 2006 at 10:03pm:
And so it should. It really is preposterous that Ofcom does not mandate proper competition (soft touch regulation?) so that all providers have to allow competition. Of course, that does stop the hapless user being made a soft touch.
But then Ofcom is an utterly preposterous regulator who only seem to have as their core mission the protection of the ill gotten profitability of the pointless ripoff businesses of Capita and various other major call centre scammers.
As to the blocking of 0871 and 0844 numbers unless the 1280 BT override code is used on Post Office HomePhone that is being done by Cable & Wireless without the Post Office's direct knowledge and permission. By contrast blocking the BT 1280 override code or indirect access carriers like 18185 requires a positive negative action against customers which has been taken by TalkTalk but not by the Post Office.
Wholesale Line Rental is not a Fit for Purpose product since according to Ofcom the companies selling it cannot make a profit from just reselling the line rental alone and rely on making you use overpriced call service to compensate for the excessive and uncompetitive prices which they have to pay to BT for the line rental. Also you cannot have a new line installed by carriers like PostOffice or TalkTalk but have to get it installed by BT, do a minimum contract period and then transfer. However the useless Ofcom only judge whether it is a success or not on the basis of the number of customers that move to WLR.
What a pathetic spineless shower Ofcom's bloated executives are. They are quite unfit to exercise the competitition functions over telecoms companies that would normally be exercised on a far more diligent basis by the Office of Fair Trading.
Unfortunately under the rotten regime of New Labour many of us have now begun to realise that the system is rotten at its very core and that matters will never improve under this government.