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Foreword

Telephone numbers are something which, understandably, people and businesses mostly take for granted. But numbers are an essential part of how residential consumers and businesses obtain and pay for their telecommunications services. Telephone numbers are an important national resource. In the past, changes to the way this resource has been managed have tended to be made on a case by case basis. Convergence and increasing competition from multiple suppliers for new services produces a need for a long-term framework for managing this resource effectively to ensure that consumers, business and residential, get the maximum benefits; and so that communications providers and users of numbers can continue to innovate with some planning certainty.

The traditional means of allocating numbers, designed in the days of a monopoly provider and slow-moving technology, is essentially inefficient in its use of numbers. In the past this has led to shortages of geographic numbers (i.e., those with an 01 or 02 prefix), particularly in the larger towns and cities, and then to large scale enforced number changes. Consumers and businesses rightly resent the consequent disruption. The hundreds of new services and substantial rise in the number of providers, that competition and technology change have made possible, bring many benefits but continue to put the geographic numbering system under strain.

A key proposal in this document therefore is for more efficient mechanisms for allocating numbers, which we believe will remove the need for such large-scale enforced number changes now and in the future.

Alongside the location-specific, geographic, number-ranges there is a series of non-geographic number ranges: 080 for Freephone and 07 for mobile phones are probably the best understood. But in general consumer awareness is low about the meaning of these number ranges and hence of the prices they can expect to pay for calling such numbers.

We are therefore proposing to make these ranges of numbers more systematic, more accessible and easily understood. A key proposal is the creation of a new Country-wide number range – 03. This will give public services and businesses the advantage of a single number nationwide and the routing advantages of, for example, being able to direct calls to whichever call centre has the lightest traffic at that time, minimising the time customers have to wait. For consumers the benefit will be that prices will be closely tied to their provider’s geographic rates and will mean that, if their provider provides inclusive or low-cost call packages, calls to 03 numbers can be included in those packages.

The other specific proposal is the use of the 06 number range for personalised number services. In the short term these will be for “follow-me-anywhere” services but in the longer term could be allocated direct to the individual in the way, for example, that personalised number plates are.

For the 08 and 09 chargeable and premium rate services ranges we propose to band new numbers by price and type of service with the straightforward message: the lower the number that follows 08 or 09 the lower the price in that range. It will also allow, for example, parents to bar access to certain types of chargeable services that they do not wish their children to call, while allowing the family to continue to have access to others, such as charity donation lines.

Finally, we are also proposing to introduce a consumer protection test when allocating telephone numbers. In the past numbers were allocated purely on the basis of need. But a small minority of unscrupulous communications and premium rate service providers have abused those numbers to cause harm to consumers. The consumer protection test would allow us to cut off the supply of numbers to such providers who might persistently and seriously misuse them.

Taken together we believe that these proposals will improve the management of the numbering system; and will, as the table illustrates, provide a framework for the future which increases consumer awareness, enhances consumer protection and allows for greater innovation and more new services.

Stephen A. Carter, Chief Executive

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