OPERATOR POLICY FORUM:

16 December 1999

Contents:

1. Agenda for the meeting.

2. Minutes of the meeting.

3. Action Points from the meeting.

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1.    Agenda

Item    -    Presented by:  (Oftel unless otherwise stated)

1.  Introduction and Action Points - Peter Walker

2.  C7 Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) - Doug Turner (BT)

3.  NTS
        a)  Focus Group - Geoff Brighton
        b)  PRS Chargebands - Keith Day (BT)

4.  Licensing Directive - Peter Davies

5.  National Leased Lines - Priya Sinha

6.  Annex 2 Applications - Ann Taylor

7.  Access to Bandwidth - Ilsa Godlovitch

8.  Oftel Long Term Strategy and Implications for 2000/2001 - Geoff Delamere

9.  Focus Group updates:

Option 2 Implementation Working Group - Lisbeth Kristoffersen (MCI Worldcom)
NTS - Geoff Brighton
Non-Geographic Number Portability - Lesley Bulman (Diamond Cable)
Geographic Portability - Gill Parker (Cable London)
Mobile Number Portability - Alastair Gilchrist (One2One)
Personal Number Portability - Stewart Lund (Redstone Telecom)
CPS Commercial Group - Karen Hardy (Energis)

10.  AOB

2.    Minutes

1. Peter Walker advised that all of the outstanding action points had either been closed or would be discussed at this OPF.

Agenda Item 2 – C7 Memorandum of Understanding

2. Doug Turner (BT and Chair C7 MoU Administrative Working Group) reported that the C7 MoU-AWG had agreed that Issue 1 of the MoU on signalling migration could be sent to operators to seek their support to the proposed migration plan of interconnect signalling to UK ISUP. He advised that the proposed migration timetable would lead to the complete withdrawal of UK-IUP by 31 December 2006. Click here to view Doug Turner's slides.

3. In response to a question from the floor Doug Turner advised that UK ISUP Version 2.2 could be obtained from the British Standards Institute.

4. Peter Walker advised that Oftel intended to send Issue 1 of the MoU to operators by no later than the week ending 24 December. Action 12/4.

Agenda Item 3A – NTS Focus Group

5. Geoff Brighton reported:

The final Statement was published on 6 December – some hard copies are available at this meeting.

New prices

From 1 January 2000 the NTS formula will no longer operate. Terminating payments will not be calculated from fixed retail prices but will be set by terminating operators in agreement with their SP’s. This will be added to BT’s operator specific originating retention to set the retail price.

Other originating operators are expected to negotiate their own retail prices with terminating operators which should include any allowances for transit costs and discounts (see below). BT need not act as the billing intermediary and should not have to make up any shortfall in payments to terminating operators where agreements have not been reached.

Discounts

Terminating operators should remember that BT normally applies discounts to all calls including NTS. BT must still cover its originating costs; the terminating payment must therefore include an allowance for BT's average discount (currently 11.75%). If terminating operators are not prepared to do this BT may choose not to discount calls to their service.

New number ranges - reminder

• 0800 (and 0808) will continue to mean ‘free’, 0845 will continue as ‘up to local rate’ and 0870 ‘up to national rate’.
• New ranges will be introduced for the expected variety of new price points:
• 0844 will be allocated for services priced between free and up to 5ppm (prices under this range might vary during the day/week but must always be below 5ppm)
• Certain ranges within 0844XX will be assigned as Internet specific numbers to be issued in blocks of 1000
• 0871 will be allocated for services priced up to 10ppm (even though, as above, prices might vary over the day/week)
• Free to caller and unmetered Internet services will use the 0808XX range, again with numbers to be issued in blocks of 1000

Retail Uplift

We had undertaken to complete the review of the NTS retail uplift by Christmas. This has not been possible and the target has been moved to end of January 2000 subject to a satisfactory consultation within the NTS focus group. A meeting of this group will be notified asap after New Year to take place in mid January assuming we have firm proposals to make.

Agenda Item 3B – PRS Chargebands

6. Keith Day (BT Pricing, Policy and Design) reported that BT now had the capability of delivering nine thousand nine hundred and ninety-nine off-switch chargebands. He explained that a proliferation of tariffs was not, however, in the consumer interest. BT was seeking OLOs’ requirements for new chargebands, the date on which they were due to be introduced and volume forecasts by 31 December 1999. Click here to view Keith Day's slides.

7. Rob Borthwick (Vodafone) suggested that requirements for new chargebands could be considered at the New Services Focus Group.

Agenda Item 4 – Licensing Directive

8. Peter Davies explained that the standardisation process required under the Licensing Directive for individual licences had now been completed. The next phase would see non-PTO licences standardised.

Agenda Item 5 – National Leased Lines

9. Priya Sinha explained that Oftel published National Leased Lines in November. The Statement set out Oftel’s intention to review the regulatory framework for the provision of leased lines. Click here to view Priya Sinha's slides.

10. Graham Lamb (BT) asked what the relationship was between Oftel’s review and that being undertaken by the Commission. Priya explained that coincidental to the Commission’s review Oftel had planned to consider the framework for the provision of leased lines.

11. Graham also asked whether Oftel had decided to promote services rather than network competition. In response Peter Walker stated that Oftel aimed to provide the best possible deal for consumers, and the best structure of competition could be a mix of network and services competition. He added that Oftel would not pursue policies that would harm network infrastructure competition.

Agenda Item 6 – Annex II applications

12. Peter Walker reminded operators that they had to apply for Annex II status. It was not automatically applied. Action 12/1.

Agenda Item 7 – Access to Bandwidth

13. Ilsa Godlovitch advised that Oftel’s November Statement – Access to Bandwidth: Delivering Competition for the Information Age – confirmed Oftel’s approach to unbundling of the local loop. The Statement made it clear that Option 2 unbundling should be available by no later than July 2001. Click here to view Ilsa Godlovitch's slides.

14. Peter Walker added that Oftel’s proposed date for the provision of unbundling took account of the need to establish ad hoc groups to consider operational issues. Rob Borthwick stated that the Operators’ Group would consider the appropriateness of pooling resources to establish a permanent group to consider such matters.

Agenda Item 8 – Oftel’s Long Term Strategy and implications for 2000/2001

15. Geoff Delamere explained that Oftel had received over thirty responses to its document seeking comments from its stakeholders – Oftel Stakeholder discussion document: Developing a long-term strategy to achieve the best deal for telecommunications customers. Oftel would use these responses to help to develop its Management Plan for 2000/2001, which it would be consulting on early next year.

Agenda Item 9 - Focus Group updates

Option 2 Implementation

16. Lisbeth Kristoffersen (MCI Worldcom) reported that the Option 2 working group has asked BT to provide details about co-location and equipment hand-over. Lisbeth advised that BT required volume forecasts.

Non-geographic number portability

17. Mark Whitbread reported on behalf of NGNP. NGNP has produced revised Terms of Reference, which take account of its work on pre-allocation portability. NGNP would be seeking comments on the revised Terms of Reference. Action 11/5. Mark also reported that BT would cease to provide non-geographic portability to operators that failed to adhere to the requirements of Schedule 07 (Reciprocal Non-Geographic Number Portability) of its Standard Interconnect Agreement. Additionally, he advised that BT would not provide pre-allocation portability if other operators refused to do so. This development was likely to delay PAP phase 1.

18. Peter Walker agreed that operators that wish to import pre-allocated numbers would have to agree to export them as well.

Geographic number portability

19. Owen Watson (Torch) advised that the GNP-FG was seeking a chairperson to replace Gill Parker. Action 12/2.

Mobile number portability

20. Report to be received. Action 12/3.

Personal number portability

21. Peter Walker reported on behalf of PNP-FG that the group is progressing with trials which are due for completion by mid-January. A recent meeting of the process subgroup has requested a number of changes to the End to End Process Manual which will result in a delay in the launch of commercial service until end of February.

CPS Groups

22. Karen Hardy (Energis) reported on behalf of the CPS Groups:

Consumer Group (Chair: Nic Green, Oftel)

• Met on 06/12/99. Much of the time was taken up with discussion of issues related to the Interim solution for CPS. Key points which came out of the meeting:
• Consumer representatives were unhappy at the loss of choice of separate ICPS Operators for national and international calls but this was mitigated by the limited period during which this would be an issue (April to December 2000).
• Consumer representatives were very concerned to reduce consumer confusion which might arise with the comparison of ICPS with indirect access. It was felt that ICPS should be transparent to the consumer as such.
• It was suggested that an element in confusion minimisation could be the removal of the requirement for a ‘reply card’. As an anti-slamming device this was of less importance with ICPS where an autodialler is to be provided. This proposal was taken to the ICPS meeting on 09/12/99 for discussion.
• Revision of the Consumer Guide would be addressed once a final ICPS solution is known.
• Next meeting 12/01/00.

Despite best efforts, the Interim solution is using a lot of resource (= people) which needs to be devoted to the permanent solution. We need to monitor carefully progress on the permanent solution to ensure that we stay on track for launch of phase 1 in December 2000.

CPS Interim Solution

23. Iain Osborne (GTS) reported on behalf of the CPS Interim Solution Group:

The ICPS Implementation Group was formed following the Oftel workshop on 11^th November. That workshop considered the legal requirement to introduce implement the CPS aspects of the Numbering Directive by 1^st April, following the European Commission’s "decision" (still not formally communicated, as far as I know) only to relax that requirement by four months rather than the twelve requested.

The workshop reaffirmed the decision to implement by a scheme using auto-diallers. It considered whether implementation should be through a scheme wholly administered by BT, but concluded (with support from BT and alternative operators) that it would probably be both more efficient and more pro-competitive to confine BT’s role to validating the inclusion of individual diallers in the scheme. A group was constituted to move towards implementation, and GTS was asked to take the chair.

The group has met six times in the intervening five weeks. It has also constituted sub-groups on technical aspects and processes, and in both cases these have reported back to plenary discussion. A number of operators have attended, as has Oftel.

The following have been achieved so far:

• Adoption of terms of reference
• Decision not to require operators to offer each other dialler management solution. (This required a slight simplification of the functional specification for CPS, in that customers will not be able to take the national and international options from different ICPS operators at the same time.)
• Decision that the scheme is to offer all three options until December 2001, plus a period (as yet undefined) for migration to switch-based CPS
• Chair attended a Consumer Group meeting to update consumer representatives as to progress
• Decision to request proposals from BT and third parties for the provision of validation services – to ensure the solution adopted is the cheapest
• Oftel has published for discussion its initial views on cost recovery

Working papers have been circulated to a wide audience, and are on the Oftel web-site. (Any other operators wishing to go on the mailing list, please contact Iain Osborne: iain.osborne@gtseurope.com.)

The group hopes to take final decisions by the end of January on who is to provide validation services and what costs can be incurred in what services, so as to launch trials in good time for a full commercial launch of the scheme by 1^st April.

Agenda Item 10 - Any other business

Indirect Access for Mobiles

24. John Bean advised that Oftel had issued the two indirect access determinations between INMS and Vodafone and INMS and BTCellnet early in December. John then outlined the timetable for IA implementation on both networks. (See slides for timetable.)

25. Mike Galvin advised that Oftel would be publishing Rollover of BT’s existing retail price and network charge controls on 20 December. He explained that the Statement, which included proposed modifications to BT’s licence, confirmed that Oftel would add rollover provisions to BT’s licence as proposed in May’s Consultation Document.

26. Karen Hardy explained that the Operators’ Group had written to Jane Whittles, Director of Compliance, to express its concern that BT had failed to launch comparable Internet products. Rob Borthwick added that in Oftel’s Guidelines on Interconnection and Interoperability it stated that an efficient operator should be able to launch its retail product derived from the interconnection service at the same time as BT launches its own retail product.

3.   Action Points