David,
You were also camapigning on an issue which it is far simpler for the media to understand as being an evil and to write up as such in their newspapers. The idea of worried old ladies spending the rest of day wondering who that silent call with number withheld was from makes for more interesting copy. Also although the changes you wanted involve some short term inconvenience to the call centres concerned in updating their systems in the long run you saved them money in no longer connecting calls that they cannot do anything productive with.
In short you were pushing at s door with the regulators that was at least partly ajar, if not fully open, and that was also a matter that the Director of Investigations alone could pursue without permission from his Board.
With 084/7 we are not pushing at an open door at all but at a closed and padlocked door, the location of which has frequently been wallpapered over by those who suggest there is no door at all and that as these calls cost only a few pence a time they are not premium rate at all. Apart from anything else we are pushing at a door that if opened would damage the financial and contractual interests of both the government itself and also of some of its very best friends in the business sector such as the directors of capita and Newscorp.
Thus the relative lack of success of this campaign (with even the headline of the 0870 con ending being really a total sham) is down to the fact that we are up against powerful and ruthless business forces who will stop at nothing to use their contacts at the regulator and their privileged access to the regulator (which in visible form is the NTS Focus Group and in invisible form is all those emails and business lunches with Ofcom personnel we do not even to get hear about) to perpetuate the "its only a few pence per minute" and "these are valuable enhanced services that would otherwise not exist" myths that are allowed to justify the conversion of formerly normally priced calls in to covert premium rate calls.
It is clear that a large number of parliamentary questions have been put down and Early Day Motions tabled on this subject but still Ofcom is shameless in trying to dodge the issue and has even failed to use its backstop powers under the Communications Act 2003 to stop companies calling 084 and 087 numbers local and national rate on material that is deemed not to be advertising but only information by the ASA.
Ofcom seems to go out of its way not to meet with members of this group and this suggests to me (as does the dsigraceful behind the scenes talks between Ofcom and ICSTIS over the new regulatory regime for 0871 numbers) that this is because it does not wish to listen to our arguments as they are not convenient to either it or its political masters.