FLG wrote on Oct 28^th, 2006 at 12:02pm:


If your provider is 02 Airwave you must be a Policeman or other emergency services worker as no one else can have an Airwave contract.

In view of the fact that O2 extensively uses 0870 and even 0871 numbers for its own call centres from landlines and in view of the fact that 02 does include 0870 numbers in inclusive calling plan allowances (for regular O2 customers rather than 02 Airwave customers) have you not tried to challenge with the powers that be in Airwave and/or the Police how 084/7 numbers can possibly be excluded from being able to be called when they include potentially essential emergency numbers like doctors surgeries and terrorist and other sudden emergency helplines.

Obviously the problem is the extra cost to the Police if 087 calls are allowed by their coppers but surely given all the other money that is tipped down the drain in policing in the UK on politically correct projects this is a very short sighted and dangerous policy that may cost someone's life sooner or later.  I agree that 084/7 numbers shouldn't exist to begin with but surely we can't expect every emergency services worker in the UK to use as much ingenuity as you obviously do to overcome this potentially life threatening and ridiculous situation.

Have you not thought of drawing your concerns over the dangers presented to emergency service workers by 084/7 numbers being excluded and yet many government contact centres using them to the attention of your member of parliament.

Perhaps you can ask your MP if he has signed the parliamentary early day motion condeming government 0870 numbers to be found at:-

http://edmi.parliament.uk/EDMi/EDMDetails.aspx?EDMID=28872%09%09%09%09%09%09%09&...

You can contact your MP via www.writetothem.com

Or thinking about it further how about a letter to The Times or Daily Telegraph or even The Guardian drawing public attention to the fact that emergency service workers may not be able to call critical numbers in an emergency due to numbers that the public has been conned into believing are local/national rate in fact being premium rate and the Police not having the budget to afford to let its workers call these covert premium rate numbers.

The access to 087/084 number via Airwave is as a result of cost, we would not never use such numbers to contact persons / companies in an emergency, for instance, if you need to contact the local electricity company, you would never use the 'customer services' number, we have number for the specialist units.

But it does prove the point - "do as I say, not as I do" in other words, it's okay for the public to spend 8pp/m plus, but not the govenment! Even though most govenment departments now use 087 number for the public to contact them

FLG wrote on Nov 3^rd, 2006 at 10:09am:

and
NGMsGhost wrote on Nov 3^rd, 2006 at 10:38am:
I agree.

FLG, is there any publically available information that we can refer to that states that 084x/087x can't/shouldn't be dialled.  I realise parts of Airwave are probably confidential due to its use, etc but ideally we need a website or pubically available document that states this so that we can refer to it when contacting the government, etc.

NGMGhost - In one of Ofcon's many consultations they admitted that 084/087 were premium rate, do you know which Consultaton that was and/or if it is mentioned on their website?

Thanks.

NGMsGhost wrote on Nov 3^rd, 2006 at 10:38am:

The public document on that subject is (typically) vague:

Quote:

http://www.airwaveservice.co.uk/assets/documents/O2_Telephony_Update.pdf

Heinz wrote on Nov 3^rd, 2006 at 12:03pm:


Surely this is not vague at all as it clearly suggests 084/7 are classed by O2 Airwave as Premium Rate if they cannot be dialled using the phones.  Find me Anywhere numbers have always traditionally been classified as 070 Personal Numbers so that only leaves Premium Rate Services to cover 084 and 087.

More and more Police Forces are changing to the 0845 numbers and it is these numbers that are then published to other Police Forces in the event that they need to contact them. The result is that Police spending on phone calls in all Police Forces is out of control.

The only winner in all this is BT.

The losers are you and I, the taxpayers. 

4PetesSake wrote on Nov 4^th, 2006 at 3:43pm:

I'm out of touch on the subject now but I suspect that PNN (the Police National Network) covers such inter-force communications and standard telephone numbers are not used at all any more.