Arrrg! OFCOM

As ever, just my personal opinions on things...

















  1. Tell me about it - despite having ensured that data for all my users in a principally fixed location is present in the BT database, I got a vaguely threatening letter from them reminding me that they are able to take enforcement action and issues fines of up to (from memory) £10k per day etc...

    I wonder if the solution is to have it so that if the emergency operator presses e.g. '9' it plays back a text to speech of their address if known - that is technically making available ;)

  2. Surely the 'correct' thing to do is to find evidence of other organisations flouting the guidelines and make formal complaints about them.

    If nothing is done about the complaints, there's your evidence that OfCom consider it acceptable practice if and when they come after you.

  3. Actually, you have a good idea there.

    If we made a formal complaint about, say, Orange, providing voicemail and therefor not operating in accordance with the numbering plan, OFCOM would have to reply. Their reply would give the answer to whether we can run voicemail or not.

    I may do that.

    They did noting about mobile operators not providing ACR and that is a law being broken after something like a decade by pretty much all mobile operators.

  4. You'd probably be on stronger ground with the 07973 100 xxx customer service numbers, the similar ones used by other operators or even the remote voicemail access numbers most operators provide wouldn't you?

  5. Better complaint would be about an operator putting their customer services on an 07 number, see e.g. http://help.orange.co.uk/orangeuk/support/personal/contacting-us/paym - that would seem to me to be 'more' against the rules than the voicemail side of things, given calls to that number will *never* terminate on a mobile...

  6. Why just one complaint? You need to leave no wiggle-room ("Well, their circumstances were different to yours") - in order for this to be any way effective, every single example of the rules being 'broken' need to be covered.

  7. http://business.orange.co.uk/home/small/products-and-services/services-and-accounts/voice-services/everyphone - free diverts to a landline for your mobile number. I had this years ago on my personal account when I was with them.

    How can OFCOM allow this yet complain about your services potentially terminating an 07 number on a fixed/SIP line?

  8. Sorry for thick question - what's the deal for emergency calls from mobiles ? Presumably live location data (coords of current serving cell?) is passed to emerg services in real time.

    FWIW Voda ask me to register (in their web portal) the address where my femtocell is located, such that they can provide this to emerg services, again presumably in real time.

  9. Yes, mobile operators have means to pass cell details to emergency services in real time. The mechanism for everyone else is the BT database pre-filled with address details. Its not a system that makes sense for VoIP.

  10. The one time I had cause to ring 999 on my mobile I had to wait while the 999 operator I had connected to (presumably operated by t-mobile) dictated my mobile number (but nothing else like cell details) to the police operator. This was in 2008. Doesn't sound very real time to me!

  11. OfCom's "we don't give legal advice" has been the bane of Radio Amateurs for a long time. They introduced a new licence a few years ago which had bits missing from the old one (apparently by accident), which means that if you read it as it is written then things that we could do previously are no longer allowed, including some things that thousands of people do every day. (There is no suggestion that they intended to ban them).

    If you ask them for clarification they give the answer you got, so the only way to determine if you're complying with the law is to do what you want and see if they prosecute! The trouble is, that can get very expensive, win or lose.

    It's utterly ludicrous and should be changed.

    Cheers, Howard (G1BYY)

