My FOI questions to Old Town Surgery and subsequent response:
[preamble cut]
I am a British citizen who is a permanent resident of the United States. I am concerned that an increasing number of health care facilities, such as Old Town Surgery, Bexhill-on-Sea, are using non-geographic telephone numbers (also known as NTS numbers), primarily in the 0844 range, as the only means by which a patient, or indeed an individual calling on behalf of a patient, can contact the surgery by telephone.
Ofcom, the regulatory authority for telecommunications in the United Kingdom, provided the following response to a Freedom of Information request submitted by myself in 2005 which included the question "Is Ofcom aware of the difficulties experienced by people trying to access non-geographic numbers from overseas?". Ofcom's response is shown below:
[begin quote]
Ofcom is the national regulatory authority for communications in the UK. Ofcom does not control access to UK services in other countries. Such access is regulated by a combination of commercial arrangements (egg, for NTS, non-geographic numbering) within a framework set by the International Telecommunications Union (ITU) (eg, for geographic and mobile numbering).
Ofcom is aware that callers may experience difficulty in accessing UK non-geographic numbers from outside the UK. This results from uncertainties over financial returns for routing between international operators caused by the variable cost of calls and imbalances between charges that can be retained or passed on through international arbitrage. UK residents dialling the non-geographic numbers of other countries from the UK frequently experience the same or similar problems. Individual countries do not normally permit access to non-geographic numbers from overseas. This is because these services are differently priced from geographic services and it is impossible for an operator in the originating country (which in many cases may not be transmitting the international part of the call) to know what the appropriate price and for the correct amount to be passed via several carriers and be paid to the terminating operator.
[end quote]
Further evidence relating to the inability of foreign networks to terminate calls to 0844, and similar numbers can be found in two Ofcom documents relating to the NTS review. Selected quotations are shown below, together with links to the original documents:
[begin]
Number Translation Services:
A way forward
Publication date: 28 September 2005
http://www.ofcom.org.uk/consult/condocs/nts_forward/nts_way_forward.pdfParagraph 1.7
Provision of public services: there has been growing concern over the inappropriate use of revenue sharing numbers by some public services, fuelled by several cases which have attracted a high level of media attention. The problem has been exacerbated by the fact that many NTS numbers may not be accessible from overseas networks, preventing access for UK residents who are overseas or other international callers.
Paragraph 3.8
A few consumers, some of whom responded from overseas said that NTS numbers couldn’t always be accessed from abroad making it difficult for them to contact essential public sector services.
Paragraph 4.38
A further difficulty with public sector use of 08 numbers is that some 08 number ranges may be inaccessible when calling from abroad. Ofcom has had a number of complaints from UK citizens based overseas who have been unable to contact public services provided on NTS numbers.
Paragraph 6.177
Ofcom is also concerned that some public services may not be accessible from overseas locations because some foreign operators restrict access to 08 number ranges. Ofcom proposes to raise this issue with the European Regulators Group (‘ERG’), and to explore the scope for remedial action.
[end]
[begin]
NTS: A Way Forward
Statement
Publication date: 19 April 2006
http://www.ofcom.org.uk/consult/condocs/nts_forward/statement/statement.pdfParagraph 4.50
As discussed in more detail in Annex 4, Ofcom has also obtained information from BT and C&W (the two largest TCPs) on the proportions of incoming 084 and 087 traffic, which originates abroad. Based on this information, Ofcom estimates that between 1.5% and 5.5% of 0845 and 0870 traffic originates abroad. BT told Ofcom that it blocks almost all international inbound traffic to 0844 and 0871 numbers because of concerns about fraud and C&W told Ofcom that they block some traffic because historically there had been little demand for these ranges to be opened for international access. It was not possible to estimate reliably the proportion of 0844 and 0871 calls that originate abroad because it is unclear whether BT and C&W are typical in blocking international access to 0844 and 0871 numbers. If BT is typical it would suggest that the vast majority of traffic is blocked. However, this hypothesis is somewhat at odds with the results of the sample survey, which shows that 0871 numbers can be accessed from approximately 20% of foreign networks and C&W, indicated that it only blocks some inbound traffic to 0844 and 0871 numbers.
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FOI response - Old Town Surgery, Bexhill-on-Sea (Read 11,308 times)
