NGMsGhost wrote on Nov 10^th, 2006 at 11:31am:
I realise that but I was referring mostly to the cost and until July 2004, calls to 0845/0870 were charged the same as geographical calls (for majority of telephony consumers) except not included in any inclusive minutes.  It's not uncommon to have t&c, exclusions, FUP's, etc with a service you get.  Therefore, its harder to state they weren't local/national simply because they did cost the same looking at it from the cost point-of-view.  However, I also agree that they shouldn't have been described local/national rate as they were excluded from inclusive tariffs.

I realise this sounds like I'm contradicting myself but it depends on which direction you approach this from (so-to-speak) - from a purely 'cost' point of view they were the same cost as geographical numbers but from an 'inclusive plan' point of view, then they shouldn't have been described as local/national rate.

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Yes, I agree.  Before July 2004, I was aware of the cost of these numbers and they were excluded from inclusive price plans (and always have been) however until I found this site, I never realised that revenue sharing was taking place despite the fact they were still being (and still are) described as local/national rate calls and not premium rate calls as they should have been.

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I've also (where possible) been trying to avoid ringing these numbers and searching the 'net for alternatives for many years and until I found this site, didn't realise a database of alternatives existed and once I had found this site, I obviously added all those alternatives I'd found.

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I have to agree here as it was unfair for those on inclusive price plans but again, calls did still cost the same as geographicals for those that weren't on an inclusive plan hence why I think the ASA/Ofcom didn't entertain such complaints.

However, after July 2004 and the forced migration by BT, these NGN's should have definitely stopped being misleadingly described not just because they were excluded from inclusive tariffs but because of the price difference between 084/087 and that of normal geographical calls.

The ASA are helping in this (to a certain degree) but Ofcom, the so-called regulator, doesn't care and just passes any such misleading descriptions complaints to other gov departments but yet this problem is so wide-spread especially as at least 99% (in my opinion) of CP's and OCP's still describe 084/087 calls as local/national rate respectively that I believe it is for the telecom regulator (or another regulator) to sort out and NOT trading standards which has no legal powers to do anything.

If there was only a few CP's/OCP's misleadingly describing these numbers as local/national rate then I agree that trading standards could deal with it the best they can.

0870advice.com wrote on Nov 10^th, 2006 at 12:20am:
That is good news that you will stop these misleading descriptions.  However, the widespread use of these misleading descriptions is all to great and is why ultimately some businesses/gov departments and most consumers still believe this misleading description.  A recent perfect example, derrick's thread here where his call to Consumer Direct and a manager revealed that they are still under the belief that 0845 is local rate.

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Yes some of their measures are badly thought out as has always been the case even from days of Oftel.  If Oftel would have thought in advance about call transparancy then the 0844 range would have made more sense and each of the 'fifth' digit would indicate the cost of the call - at least from a BT landline.

However, it seems to me that your main problems are the loss of revenue share on these stealth premium rate numbers.

You say you would also like greater call transparency (which is great) except do you agree that consumers should be fully aware that calls to 08 numbers are in fact just stealth premium rate numbers (ie revenue sharing takes place in most cases)?

Shiggaddi,

That's a very good point and because businesses apparently get very little 'revenue' back and the fact that it isnt the main reason for using an 084x/087x then you are right and we can all look forward to businesses migrating to 03x and only having to change one digit.


That also means there is no need for this forum or its database from around February 2007 when the new 03x range is available. 

Couple of key problems for businesses in using 03 ranges

*  Cannot be called from overseas
*  Changing a number is the same effort whether its 1 digit or all digits
*  With number portability across networks being in place for quite a few years now, its far from guaranteed that a business will be able to attain the equivelant 03X number to their 08X number. 

The 1st and 3rd of these should be overcomeable if Ofcom were to put in place the approapriate planning but they have failed to do so at this point in time...

On the point that bbb made, Ofcom do have the power to mandate the level of 'margin' that an OCP can be receive for a non geographic call and this 'margin' could be reversed so that the payment is collected from the recipient of the call as a surcharge or a deductioon from revenue, so there should be no need for the caller to ever pay more than the stated cost of the call no matter what the pricing band is, this would remove the need to for call announcements, would remove all the confusion and would be pretty straightforward to administer! 

0870advice.com

0870advice.com wrote on Nov 12^th, 2006 at 7:53pm:
I agree with all of them.

On your first point, there is no reason why 03 couldn't be open from overseas but I realise it would take a while (I can imagine).  According to Ofcom, some of the reasons why existing 08 NGNs may not work from overseas (this does include 0845/0870 but is more likely to a problem with 0844/0871) is that overseas operators may not be certain on how much a call will cost due to high cost of these numbers and the uncertainty of the revenue share that takes place amongst the different providers involved.  However, once the new 03x range becomes widely used (I have my doubts it will due to the loss of revenue for the business concerned) then overseas calls to 03x should be just as diallable as geographicals (I realise this will take time) as no revenue sharing takes place and they cost the same as geographicals.

I read that 0844/0871 is more than likely uncertain due to the fact that BT, etc do not open these numbers up from overseas as very few businesses use them - currently anyhow but obviously that will change.

On your third point, I'm sure that the old 0345 were given priority and similar numbers when they were forced to 0845 (especially with gov depts, etc)

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I totally agree.  I read in one of the consultation statements that they could force OCPs to charge the same to maintain price transparancy but of course Ofcom haven't.

As I said in an earlier post, the cost of these numbers can be significantly higher from mobiles and as such at the very least they should have call announcements from mobiles.  This was rejected by Ofcom as they were told by OCPs that this would cost way too much which is weird as no-frills cheap call providers like Call1899, Call18185, Call18866 all have free call announcements available which can be turned off or on from within online account settings, etc.  Now these companies only charge on average 4p per call to a geographical and in most cases are cheaper on other calls as well so obviously their profit margins (if any) must be low in comparison to that of BT, TW/NTL, etc.  Now if these companies can provide a free call announcement on their profit margins then I'm certain that other big OCPs can.  The difference being is that they don't want to as their customers could be fully aware of how much they are paying for their calls which may force them to move to another provider.

Quote: Again I agree.  This also means going by what you say here is that revenue share is a big deal which contradicts one of your earlier posts where you state that revenue wasn't really the deciding factor - it was the service features and the one number that wouldn't change if they moved premises, etc.

Reply: The contradiction you are picking up on is that we feel that for most businesses revenue share isn't the deciding factor, but for us as a service provider it is a big deal as we now have to plan for alternatives to replace that revenue once it is lost.

To answer your other questions

We plan at this point in time to charge a per minute fee to receive calls as we will also be charged a per minute fee in transitting the calls.  Much as charging a rental which is inclusive of minutes would obviously be appealing to any business, it doesn't allow us to grow the back end as usage grows.  Network capicity, ivr facilities etc. all cost plenty of money and you have to have the revenue source to increase capacity in line with adding more customers but also in line with a customers growth of their own businesses.  Don't forget of course that networks and fancy technology don't work without people support, and clued up staff don't come cheap! 

OCP's that don't make call charges for 0845 are the ones that offer particularly 'vanilla' service, with no bells & whistles and very little people support.  Their business plan tends to work on mass volume of customers which is ok perhaps in the small business market, but once a busienss starts to grow they need support of a service provider that has the people resource to hold their hand somewhat in putting the right telephony processes in place so that they minimise growing pains and prevent giving their customers poor experience as they grow their businesses. 

0870advice.com

Unfortutely its not just down to datafill but rather down to BT restrictions, apparently this is due to the risk of fraud!?! 

0870advice.com

0870advice.com wrote on Nov 13^th, 2006 at 12:12pm:


If the revenue wasn't a big deal then most of these call centres would be using a 1p per minute at all times 0844 number wouldn't they?

Instead of which whole rafts of people are already starting to switch over to 0871 having realised that there is currently no greater a price disclosure requirement than with 0870.

The reality is that all 087 users and all 0844 5p per minute users want the revenue share.  Its just a standard cynical marketing ploy of the call centre industry to pretend that the existence of the revenue share is unimportant to the call centre.

If this revenue share was actually so unimportant then why would the BBC/Capita, for whom the use of 0870 is so especially unaccceptable, have fought tooth nail to hang on to them no matter how much public criticism they may have received and regardless of the content of the COI's latest updated Contact Centre Guidance.