I've never really understood this site's premise?

OK, I'm being contentious here, but can you not see the hypocrisy of it all.

As i understand this, the main complaint is the use of premium rate numbers with confusing charges often going hidden or undeclared, or not unifrom, and how it si the various businesses sucker-punching call-revenue for hapless 'Joe Public'. Post after psot blames this company or the other for creaming you all.
Oh... pleeeeze, come on.

Sorry, but can you not see the hypocrisy of the argument? Almost every man-jack of you reading this operates your very own premium number. It will likely cost more to dial than many an NGN too. And likely you all sucked it up.

I of course refer to yoru 07XXX number.

We were offered by the Telco industry a mobile in the millions.
What it cost to call was low on the list of priorites, compared (in the early days) to the convenince, and dare I say prestige. Even today,   the situation could be reagarded as ever more ridiculous (but that is another post).

You all did what most of the end-users of NGNs  are doing right now, you bought what was offered. So you must ask yourself,  why did you do this? The ansewer is simple, becaause to get the service you desired, you had no choice.

I have previously decalred, we are NGN users, and we can honestly sayy, when we first took our 0870, we had much the same thought processes as 'Joe-Public' now does when said Joe signs up for his first mobile phone. If we wanted teh service, we signed-up or went without.

So I'm sorry, don't complain when XYZ company has you dial their premium 0870/0845/08blah NGN. You would do the same.

In fact, oh look... you already did.

I'm looking forward to this one too. Compared to 07XXX NGN numbers, and go on, tell me you've not got one, little 'ole 087X/084X etc is a minor, minor backwater.

I agree. The reason is because consumers have simply reacted to an adverse net-effect of an issue they don't have appreciation for and understanding of. As a result, there is a total lack of discussion on what is at the heart of the issue: termination charges (which are the interconnection rates of differing operators). Because of this there can be no discussion about what policy should be, by way of a resolution.

As you say, private consumers do the same to others (by way of mobile numbers), but don't put any energy into the issue like they do when companies do it to them. This is the same as many users of 084 numbers who frequently don't acknowledge what they're doing either.

That's the end of the trailers. Now for a message advising to switch mobile phones off (sponsored by a mobile phone company). The curtains open to allow projection of 21:9 images.

Calls to 084, 087 and 09 numbers incur a Service Charge to the benefit of the called party. This generally makes these calls more expensive than calls to 01, 02 and 03 numbers and precludes their inclusion within inclusive call bundles - which is the majority way that people pay for their calls these days (Note that BT pricing for non-geographic calls is not typical as it is affected by legacy regulation that ends in 2015).

This site exists to find and then alert people to alternative 01, 02 and 03 numbers for published 084 and 087 numbers. A much wider campaign exists elsewhere to end the inappropriate use of 084 and 087 numbers by organisations that are not providing a chargeable service. The law agrees with this point, and the new CCR legislation makes it illegal to use 084, 087 and 09 numbers for customer service lines from 13 June 2014.

The Cabinet Office also agrees with this point and has instructed public services to use 03 numbers as their primary number. The new policy allows retention (for now) of 0845 and other numbers for use by the small number of callers (mostly with BT) that benefit from discounted rates when calling 084 and 087 numbers outside the allowances of their inclusive call plan. They may be no need for such retention after June 2015.

Calls to 084 and 087 numbers are generally overpriced when called from mobile phones. Ofcom is addressing that point with the introduction of the "unbundled tariffs" pricing regime on 26 June 2015. The fact that the mobile industry is opposed to these changes, and has already caused them to be significantly delayed, could be taken as a sign that the measures are exactly what is required to bring transparency to the pricing of these calls and force a much-needed reduction in their prices.

Once the new system is in place, there may well be some serious questions to ask of some providers, both landline and mobile. These enquiries will revolve around the levels and the difference in the levels of their call prices for calling geographic-rate numbers, for calling mobile numbers and their Access Charge for calling chargeable non-geographic numbers. I include calls to mobile numbers in this simply because the mobile termination rate has been steadily reduced over the last few years and by April 2015 will be under 0.5p/min and yet the price of calling a mobile number from a landline continues to go up. However, this is a different issue to that caused by the usage of 084, 087 and 09 numbers. With a mobile phone, the user is not making money from incoming calls.

In Section A1 of the latest published version of National Telephone Numbering Plan that comes into effect in June 2015 there is an extra column headed "tariff principles". So far, this column is filled in only for 03 (parity with 01/02 rates), 080 (free), 084, 087, 090, 091 and 098 (Service Charge plus Access Charge) numbers (as well as 116 (free) and 118 (Service Charge plus Access Charge) numbers). The possibility therefore exists for a "tariff principle" to be applied to 07 mobile numbers at some point in the future. Perhaps the long term aim is parity with geographic rate?

03700000000 wrote on Feb 22^nd, 2014 at 9:43am:



Local rate does not exist and hasn't since 2004, ASA, TS, Ofcom etc all agree!

.

Dave do you mean like this? Couldn't find the famous mobile operator..

CJT-80 wrote on Feb 22^nd, 2014 at 8:57pm:

Thanks. I specifically said that the message was "sponsored by a mobile phone company" so as not to offer any brand name.

Yes, mobiles are generally more expensive than other landlines but the problem I have with some NGNs are the fact that some  companies/organisations are using these numbers not for any routing ability but the fact it allows them to actually receive revenue from the calls.  It is a stealth premium rate.

This is different from official premium rate numbers (09x) where regulation may prohibit charging people whilst in a long queue and more to the point consumers are aware of the approximate cost and the fact that the called company/organisation makes money from it.

It's actually the OCP (Originating Communications Company) like BT, TalkTalk, SkyTalk, Virgin, etc that set how much they want to charge per min on top of the actual cost of that call.

For example, Ofcom have set price controls on how much mobile companies can charge per minute for calls to their numbers.  At this time, this rate is actually 1.08ppm so when you see likes of Virgin charging around 15-20ppm then who is benefiting from it?

Also, although I don't have the actual cost of calls to 0844/0871 but at a guess it's probably around same amount (or maybe a little cheaper) than the actual cost of calling a mobile simply because it has to be higher to pay the company/organisation called their cut of the call.

So remember it's actually the originating communications provider that sets how much it wants to charge for each call; and with 0844/0871 numbers the called company/organisation may actually financially benefit in some way whereas with mobile numbers only the OCP that benefits more.