SilentCallsVictim wrote on Nov 3^rd, 2007 at 11:51am:

Excellent piece of philosophy, are you from Ofcom?

SilentCallsVictim wrote on Nov 3^rd, 2007 at 11:51am:

Excellent point, but I don't think "willingly" applies when you have a gun to your head. Vodafone had no choice but to bid 6 billion or watch its share price crash if it lost.
SilentCallsVictim wrote on Nov 3^rd, 2007 at 11:51am:

Yes, but what about doing a "proper job" and stop the rip-off on 0800 and 0845 by the mobile operators?
You'll see both Ofcom and Davekeep forgetting about mobile call costs to 0870, 0845 and 0800. Yet the vulnerable citizens uses pre-pay mobiles not BT lines according to a government report.

SilentCallsVictim wrote on Nov 3^rd, 2007 at 11:51am:

Obviously SilentCallsVictim is well versed with this media stuff, but is it really ethical to rabble-rouse, when the real problem is Mobile overcharging and Ofcom's failure to deal with it in a balanced, well considered manner?

I have been contacted by journalists who want members of the group to make comments on this issue.

Please contact me (by PM or otherise) with details if that is you.

Members may wish to watch Working Lunch on BB2 today.

I heard today (Mon 5th November 2007) on BBC's Working Lunch programme that Ofcom are dragging their feet on bringing changes to 0870 rules.
Are you able to bring me up to date on this and are there any moves afoot to lobby Ofcom about this ??

gwr

gwr wrote on Nov 5^th, 2007 at 10:02pm:


Ofcom have postponed the proposed 0870 call price reduction on 1st Feb 2008 saying that there is an unexpected problem with ripoff burglar alarms like the ones sold by BT that dial an 0870 number to report an alarm call.  They say the call price announcement causes the burglar alarm auto reporting on alarm activation to fail.

If you read my post two above you will see I asked Geoff Brighton at Ofcom why they could not just proceed with the price reduction now and add the price announcements later.  He didn't seem to have a convincing answer.

Ofcom were told of these burglar alarm problems caused by call price announcements by the companies running them two years ago.  The burglar alarm companies have had all this time to reprogram their systems to use a geographic number.

In reality ICSTIS (or PhonePayPlus as they are now known) are way behind schedule on their regulations for 0871 numbers and Ofcom seems to be playing for time so that the two things are done together and only one set of regulatory changes are required.  They couldn't give a stuff that consumers have been waiting 3 years for these changes or that they promised faithfully that there would be no further delay.

Ofcom are serial liars and have total contempt for the UK's citizen consumers or any previous promises that they have given.

idb wrote on Nov 6^th, 2007 at 3:12pm:


A further telephone conversation with Geoff Brighton at Ofcom this afternoon reveals the whole sick, sordid and tawdry unspoken truth behind the delays to 0870 call price changes falsely being blamed on a handful of unco-operative burglar alarm systems.

According to Geoff the real truth of the matter is that Ofcom actually expects nearly all call originating parties other than BT (especially all mobile phone companies) and probably TalkTalk, NTL etc to go on charging the old higher prices to 0870 and that means they have to have announcements for all their calls to 0870 numbers for their customers that will merely include the burglar alarm companies as a tiny fraction of those calls.

So it isn't per se the burglar alarm companies that are to blame as after 1st Feb 2008 they will actually cease to get any revenue share at all if they continue to use 0870 and do not move across to say 0844.  The problem that is actually causing all the delays is that basically all mobile phone customers and many landline customers not with BT will continue to go on paying the old high 0870 rates.  No doubt the burglar alarm companies originally thought Ofcom would possibly end up mandating other OCPs to only charge geographic rates as we have thought all along would be the case (except possibly on mobiles) but now it is clear this isn't so.

So in other words basically Sean Williams and his other Ofcom cronies basically totally lied to this campaign (yes Derrick even I feel moved to use the word lied on this occasion) when I pressed him several times at the Ofcom consumer meeting on 084/7 in Nov 2005 as to why they were keeping 0870 and when he implied that they didn't really expect anyone at all to go on charging the old higher rates and have a call price announcement as they thought telcos would find this too embarassing.  But now it actually turns out that even though the revenue share disappears seemingly companies like TalkTalk, NTL, TMobile etc plan to go on charging the old high 084/7 rate and thus will be trousering absolute shed loads of money that were previously going mainly to the call centre and the terminating call centre's call company partner.  Indeed one suspects that the purpose of the current burglar alarm delay is so that Ofcom will then turn round and say oh dear the additional call price announcements aren't possible but at least BT will be lowering its 084/7 prices.

Good old Geoff claims that Ofcom have no power whatsoever over these other telcos to control their prices  and that as they don't have Significant Market Power in Ofcom's terms (even though say Vodafone and O2 acting together blatantly do) it is up to them if they want to lower their 0870 rates.  He was unable to comment on how the EU was able to force all mobile companies in the market to compulsorily lower their prices from the same date this summer, even though Ofcom would apparently see this as wholly unacceptable market intervention.

So in a nutshell not only did Ocom fail to take action to close down the 0844, 0845 and 0871 ripoffs at all while now being in blatant cohoots with PhonePayPlus (nee ICSTIS) to make sure 0871 won't be regulated as proper premium rate numbers (so most 0870 numbers can then convert to 0871) but they now expect the reduction in call prices on 0870 numbers (when an if it ever happens) to 01/02 national rate to only to be for BT phone customers and everyone else in the industry will use it is an excuse to earn even more money from their customers by charging the old prices that they will now keep much more of.  Of course I suppose Ofcom will argue that BT may make a marketing feature of having lower 084/7 prices and that this may eventually cause at least other fixed line operators to lower their prices.  But there seems no hope of this at all on mobiles where there is no equivalent of BT that will have to lower its 084/7 prices by regulator dictat.

This outcome is a major scandal that shows that Ofcom is quite unfit to regulate competition in the telecoms industry and I will be pressing my MP to ask for an investigation of this issue by the Parliamentary Ombudsman to look in to this massive failure by Ofcom to fulfil its primary remit to ensure competitive markets for UK citizens and UK consumers and for misleading the public as to the intended nature of its planned market intervention.  It appears that Ofcom's idea of competition is quite clearly that the telcos should be able to outbid each other with ever more disgusting hidden ripoff charges to bolster up their own share prices and not that they should ensure the lowest possible prices through properly competitive markets for UK citzen consumers.

DonQuixote wrote on Nov 7^th, 2007 at 3:03am:

Most of us who post here are only secondary level students who do their homework by pinching stuff off the internet.

We read in the Ofcom  statement and press release of 19 April 2006 that the regulatory changes (which were later set to come into effect on 1 February 2008) would include the following:

1. Changes to the scope of the BT NTS Call Origination Condition will remove the regulatory underpinning for revenue sharing on the 0870 range. This is said to “end revenue sharing on 0870”.

2. OCPs may either charge no more for 0870 calls than national calls to geographic numbers or make a free-to-caller price pre-announcement at the beginning of the call. These are described as being “options”.

OCPs had advised Ofcom, in January 2005, that if they were to chose the second of these options their customers would not be able to use certain equipment to call 0870 numbers. The problem rests with the originating provider who exercises a choice and is responsible for the service offered to its customers, not with the terminating provider who rents the 0870 number to the alarm company, nor Ofcom.

(The situation is the same in relation to 070 numbers, where those who use announcements have chosen an option which they know will have the effect that has been seen to put lives at risk.)

One could argue that if Ofcom had suspected that companies would be that irresponsible (pushing someone else’s hand into a fire) then it should have acted as their nanny and taken action to stop them. The companies are however known to commend Ofcom for its “light touch” approach.

DonQuixote wrote on Nov 3^rd, 2007 at 9:19am:

We have all woken up to express our objections to this, we all note Ofcom’s inability to address it properly, we each see different priorities and may disagree about what is the best way of dealing with it. There may not be much that we can achieve, but let us focus our efforts on what little we can do.

Whatever the truth may be, Ofcom will continue to seek to appear to be furthering the interests of consumers. This must be exploited to the full.

Contributions from undergraduates or those with doctorates are very welcome to elevate the discussion and provide information to enable more effective action.

DonQuixote wrote on Nov 7^th, 2007 at 3:03am:


No it was Ofcom that created the pre announcement get out that they were extensively cross questioned about at the NTS meeting they had with consumer groups and they said that in practice they expected no one to use it as there would be no point with revenue share abolished   Either they were naive and incompetent or they were simply lieing.  Probably both depending on which member of Ofcom staff you are talking about.

We the consumers pointed out the exemption on 0870 geographic pricing for companies that made call price announcements was totally unacceptable and would be abused.  It was Ofcom that chose to completely ignore our representations and press on regardless.

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So why did Ofcom tell us and all the UK's national press that it was abolishing it and ensuring 0870 numbers were going to be charged as normal calls for all consumers.  They didn't qualify their announcement (geographic rate on 0870 from 1st Feb 2008 only guaranteed for those who have a BT Retail phone line).

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Couldn't decide on your origins or motivations for a while.  You now reveal yourself as a fully paid up member of the NTS Call Centre Industry Abusers camp.  You even describe the announcement as boring.  Only a call centre ripoff man making loads of money from NTS would see it that way.

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Fine then let them use properly premum rate 09 numbers and provide call barring as standard on all phone lines which the line owner has to disable if he wants other household members to be able to use these numbers.  It is the fact that the extra charges for these numbers have relied on lies about the call price to hide them and that the incompetent regulator has still not banned the use of deliberately misleading terms like Lo-Call and National Rate in non advertising information material and on websites (which there is huge amounts of) which is what we are upset about.  This is a massive distortion of normal market forces and means people don't make a rational choice about whether to call 084/7 or not.  Also had it been revealed this was the real purpose of 084/7 NTS at the outset then no respectable regulator would ever have allowed the system in to being (not that OFTEL were a respectable regulator but instead a regulator hijacked by telco cronies and infiltrated by BT staff).

Also many of these companies are monopoly suppliers or have customers locked in long contracts and if you use email or the website they ignore the customer totally and don't reply.  The sort of companies you talk about are scam boys interested only in their directors ramping up the share price up and their own salaries and bonuses in the short term before they bugger off to asset strip and screw customer service at the next big company on another £5 million per annum salary package.

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At least we agree Ofcom are totally useless and/or even totally corrupt (actually following New Labour orders to regulate in favour of their business political allies while making out to be neutral consulting and acting in accordance with the public interest) if we disagree on everything else.  Those lower down the food chain at Ofcom don't see the big picture so deny this is so uit I'm sure those at the top of Ofcom who are after the knighthoods and the peerages are well aware this is what is really going on.