Maxadolf wrote on Feb 2
nd, 2009 at 11:03pm:
Can someone please explain why Ofcom, the Government or any other government agency will not agree to make the use of non-geographic numbers illegal
Er. because NGN numbers themselves are not inherently a problem.
Quote:given:
1. They clearly create communication problems when phoning from abroad.
2. They are more often than not a crude device for extracting money from users during "dead" time, the most obvious and frequent abuse being lengthy delays once contact is established.
3. They are not embraced in the UK by contracts involving a fixed monthly payment to the carrier for "free" calls and, therefore, must be considered as premium-charge calls.
All these points are a consequence of choices by your telecommunications provider in how they charge you and other telcos for handling calls to different number ranges, and to a lesser extent, if they share any of that money with the terminating telco and their customer. So, companies keep you on hold to garner revenue, and foreign telcos are reluctant to handle calls for which they get charged more to accept.
For you, since different providers charge different amounts and include different ranges of numbers, you have a choice of how much you want to pay and who you spend it with. I do not know of any provider that would include £1.50/min 09 numbers in their inclusive calls, wheras most include geographic landlines. At what point in between they draw the line is a commercial decision. BT have just altered where their line is, by including 0845 & 0870 numbers in their inclusive calls periods. Most mobile tarffs include calls to other mobile phones, whereas BT don't. The choice is yours, and the best option depends on your calling pattern.
Quote:4. They lack permanence and are likely to change from year to year, if not sooner.
This is unfortunate, and is due to greedy companies moving away from using an NGN number for the convenience of the customer (why "local rate" calls were invented in the first place) and towards using calls to generate revenue (surely the only reason for 0871). NGN numbers were often marketed to companies so they did not have to change numbers if they moved!
Quote:I do recall that in Tony Blair's time there was much debate about this issue, but still nothing materialised! Apart from the revenue-thieving aspect by the telecommunication companies, inter alia, is there some other agenda behind their maintenance? It seems to me that the creation of 03 is a part solution in that only BT seem to treat it as a "geographic" number, but not Virgin or any of the other telecommunication companies.
Maxadolf
All communications providers are mandated to treat 03 numbers exactly the same as 01 and 02. If you find you are being billed differently, request a refund and if this is not forthcoming, report them to Ofcom.
03 numbers are what 0345 (local rate, now 0845) & 0990 (national rate, now 0870) were orginally intended for. i.e. costing you, the public, the same as calling a normal number. Remember, originally BT charged companies to receive calls using these numbers, too.
Please don't confuse the concept of Non-geographic numbers with revenue-sharing numbers - they are different concepts and relate to different aspects of the telecoms industry. Although 08 numbers share both attributes, and 01/02 generaly have neither, 03 numbers, for instance, are most definitely non-geographic, but pretty unlikely to be revenue-sharing.