idb wrote on Nov 27^th, 2007 at 12:18am:

Might I suggest a moderately worded press release on behalf of the saynoto0870 campaign along the lines of the following rough draft:

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1. We note the press release issued by the BSIA on Monday 26 November 2007 and are disappointed at the inaccuracies it contains.

2. We trust that BSIA members are now urgently concluding the arrangements they have been making over the last 18 months since this change was announced by Ofcom. They will be either transferring systems onto other numbers, or transferring the remote telephone service from the alarm to companies who have chosen to comply with Ofcom’s intention of providing transparency in call charges, and therefore do not need to use the pre-announcement.

3. It is unfortunate that those who provide the remote telephone service for systems operated by BSIA members have chosen to defy Ofcom’s intention of providing transparency in call charges and have instead chosen the highly unsuitable option of using individually tailored call price pre-announcements.

4. The latter decision is particularly disappointing as their industry group was aware in January 2005 that pre-announcements would interfere with the operation of certain equipment.

5. We are astonished and deeply disappointed that Ofcom has decided to allow an indefinite extension to the time it had already allowed for the necessary changes to be made.

6. We are however pleased by the recent Ofcom proposal that users of 0870 numbers will no longer be able to draw any income from them when calls are originated on the BT network.

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I am still awaiting “objective informed comment” about the consultation (see reply #57 above) – PLEASE CAN SOMEONE HELP!!

David

It's totally daft anyway.  I use occasionally call18866 on the home phone.  These have an anouncement of the cost of the call on EVERY number you dial.  BUT while it's being read out, the phone at the other end is already ringing - so, if someone answers quickly, the announcement is interrupted.   It doesn't last long anyway - surely this would work as alarm services would answer immediately?  How long does it take to say "ten pence per minute"?  It takes longer to dial the number!

Anyway, it was only alternate telcos that were proposing to use pre-call announcements - BT was to be obliged to reduce the costs.  I'd expect that most alarm systems either have their own phone lines, or are wired direct into line, so are unlikely to be routed via alternate providers.

The problem, so we are lead to believe, is that certain electronic devices don't like the announcement. What about a prefix beginning 1 to supress the announcement?

SilentCallsVictim wrote on Nov 30^th, 2007 at 2:01pm:


You didn't mention the ludicrously short deadline, although history shows that Ofcom will accept anything that is with them up to 9am on Monday morning.  I was about to get to reading it but had no idea there was such a short deadline for comment.

Anyhow do Ofcom ever take any notice of comments from the public?

I responded to PhonePayPlus's (then ICTSIS) Pre consultation and consultation on 0871 numbers at length and they just dismissed the views of over 600 consumers as being those of a well organised pressure group and instead went with the views of their 20 chums in the NTS ripoff industry.

So does making comments to Ofcom make any difference?  History shows it does not.  Its CEO can't be bothered to even reply to a direct email to him from me (and copied to numerous other regulators, ministers and MPs) accusing Ofcom of failing in their principal duty to UK citizen consumers under Part 3(i) of the Communications Act 2003 by delaying 0870 call price reduction on the spurious excuse of the burglar alarm problem that they had actually known about all along and that could easily have been worked around.

So I repeat does mere citizen cnsumers giving their views to Ofcom actually influence their thinking or intended course of action?  I think history shows otherwise.

Also I was down in Bristol all day yesterday as some of us do occasionally do other things than posting on this website.  So I couldn't have responded in the timescale.

Can i fan the flames slightly, but this isnt designed to antagonise.

If the outcome of the Ofcom consultation is that 0870 numbers can remain, this could be a positive as the recent renumbering that has been seen is that 0870 either become 0871 at a higher cost, or 0844 (5ppm). The downside of both of these is that the cost to call remains the same 24/7, and therefore are more likely to be called from a  residence at the higher rate, as appossed to the current numbers that the majority will call from a workplace during the day, but are discounted off peak.

This will ultimately result in higher bills for domestic users. 

Whilst this site is against 0870, it is surely better than the alterantive that is being promoted for use.




(and yes, i work within the industry, but that doesnt change my thoughts on appropriate and innappropriate uses for NGN's)

Following on from the announcement, if you can call it that, about the changes to 0870 being suspended, Ofcom has today declared that 070 numbers don't have to have pricing announcements because of the issues they cause with equipment such as burglar alarms.

http://www.ofcom.org.uk/consult/condocs/numbering03/070precall/

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Removal of the requirement for pre-call announcements on 070 numbers

The 070 number prefix is intended to identify those numbers as being “personal numbering” services which enable the holder of the number to be contacted whatever their location. 070 numbers have been widely abused, in particular for scamming purposes, in many cases with consumers believing they are responding to a missed call from a mobile number, which also commences with “07”.

In Ofcom’s statement Raising confidence in telephone numbers, published on 31 May 2007, we announced measures aimed at protecting against such abuses by two principal means:

    * first, from 1 September 2007 Communications Providers have been required to provide free pre-call announcements (PCAs) for calls to 070 numbers where either the per minute or the per call charge exceeds 20p so that consumers would be aware of the maximum charges that could apply to such calls;
    * second, we reiterated our earlier policy decision from 27 July 2006 to evaluate the long term future of personal numbers by reviewing the situation at the end of 2007. Our original intention was to migrate current 070 services to another number range by the end of July 2009.

Since the introduction of the PCAs in September, Ofcom has received a number of complaints about them. In particular, we have identified certain automated calling services provided on the 070 range designed to protect human life or property, where use of the PCAs has caused these remotely activated calling services to fail because of the dialling delay introduced by the PCA. This potentially endangers the life and security of people who depend on the reliability of such services.

Examples of this would be a personal safety or burglar alarm which, when activated, triggers an auto-dialler to contact a monitoring centre. The reason for the time-out is that in the event that the call is not completed, the unit will automatically disconnect and try again for a set period or a certain number of times. For many such units the duration of the time-out means that after the PCA has been played there is little or no time for the call to be completed before the unit disconnects and retries. Ofcom does not regard the use of such services as falling within the generally understood use of personal numbering services. One option would be to require these applications to be moved from the personal numbering range however, this would require a minimum of several months lead time and not address the risks quickly enough.

Given the risk of such services not working as a result of PCAs, Ofcom has already asked the major fixed line providers to lift the PCA in respect of three 100k 070 number blocks where we have identified such systems as being used. We have taken steps to identify the full extent of the use of such emergency-type service. However, given the widespread use of 070 numbers, and the number which have been allocated, it has been impossible to identify all of them. There remains, therefore, a residual risk which we are unable to eliminate, that there are still emergency-type services in use which we are unaware of.

In light of this risk we have decided that we will withdraw the requirement for PCAs on 070 numbers with immediate effect. We have already asked the fixed line providers representing the majority of users to remove the PCA, and one of the purposes of this statement is to ask all other Communications Providers to do so.

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Why is it that those at Ofcom appear to have no technical knowledge in the area they regulate? Is it not their job to realise these sorts of issues exist? 

This is, in effect, the news we were waiting for.

Ofcom has decided not to require use of PCAs.

The planned changes to 0870 cannot go ahead, as they relied on PCAs. They are therefore abandoned, not delayed.

David