I have come across Federation of Communication Services's 0871 response here.

A quick glance at it reveals that they also surprisingly believe ICSTIS is placing too much regulation on 0871.

Just viewing the 0871 research report here (.pdf).  I noticed under section 2.x it states that calls to NGNs from landlines have fallen by 50% and the possible reasons for this are:-  

• an increasing volume of calls originating from mobiles
• the more frequent use of the Internet to gain access to the services and information
  available via non-geographic numbers
• the lack of clarity regarding the cost of non-geographic calls from both fixed and
  mobile networks is deterring end users from calling.

Over the past year or so, I'd say it's likely to be the last reason but also something that ICSTIS' research didn't mention and that is the use this sites database of alternatives.  

kk wrote on Aug 19^th, 2007 at 8:36pm:


That was the basis on which I found both their 0871 Pre-Consultation and Consultation documents to be written.  Namely entirely favouring the interests of the NGN call centre industry and completely ignoring the best interests of the UK citizen consumer.

Whatever one may say about NEG at least one of their members of staff has the guts to actually put their head above the parapet here, whereas we never hear a comment from the overpaid useless loafers at Ofcom or ICSTIS from one end of the year to the other.

bbb_uk wrote on Sep 21^st, 2007 at 8:03pm:

I think it's 'Phoneplotlost'.

Some responses to the 0871 consultation are available at:

http://www.phonepayplus.org.uk/service_providers/responsestoconsultations/0871ne...

No responses from the 'general public' as yet.

Seems like the highly competent ICSTS/PhoneScamPlus cannot even adhere to confidentiality requests from respondents:

RESPONSE TO 0871 SERVICES: AN ICSTIS CONSULTATION

http://www.phonepayplus.org.uk/pdfs_consult/0871_industryresponses/reality_telec...

Full detail is provided in our response, which we would request is kept
CONFIDENTIAL.

Assuming this is in fact the confidential response, whatever the meaning of 'confidential' in this context:

<<
CONFIDENTIAL
Reality Telecom Response to 0871 Services: An ICSTIS Consultation.
We welcome the opportunity to respond to the ICSTIS consultation on 0871
services. Reality Telecom provides inbound call numbers to thousands of small and
medium businesses in the UK under the Call Navigator brand. A brief summary of
our main points is shown below, followed by more detailed responses to individual
questions raised in the consultation.

Please note that throughout our document we use the term information provider to
mean the provider of the content on the 0871 number. We are aware that ICSTIS
use the term ‘service provider’ to include the content provider, but we do this to
avoid confusion with intermediary sales channels who under current ICSTIS
definition are deemed to be service providers, even though they do not provide any
content.

[...]

>>

idb, don't suppose you've also seen the other balls up a government-related office has made today? 

Oh, and what exactly does the telephone scamming business not want us to know (having not seen this "confidential" document)?