OPERATOR POLICY FORUM: Thursday 26th April 2001

Contents:

1. Agenda for the meeting.

2. Minutes of the meeting.

3. Action Points from the meeting.

1.    Agenda

Item    -    Presented by:  (Oftel unless otherwise stated)

1. Introduction and Action Points - Chris Kenny

2. BT Changes to the April 2000 Contract Review - Keith Mitchinson (BT)

3. BT/operator joint working SLA Process Sub-Group - Lois Nash (Orange)

4. Oftel Retrospective Billing for 96/97 - Sara-Jane Amey (Telewest)

5. Focus Group updates:
- NTS - Geoff Brighton
- Mobile Number Portability - Peter Roberts (Orange)
- CPS - Karen Hardy (Energis)
- ICPS - Wendy Dodd (MCI Worldcom)

6. Forthcoming and Recent Oftel Publications - Chris Kenny

7. AOB

2.    Minutes

Agenda Item 1 - Introduction and Action Points

Chris Kenny opened the meeting by referring to one action point (AP 03/3) outstanding from the previous meeting:

• An E-mail was sent out to all operators on 22 March 2001 by Oftel's Numbering Unit asking opinions on the new application forms and inviting operators to meet with Oftel if they had any particular concerns. No operators have to date requested a meeting in response to the E-mail. However, the invitation to operators would remain open.
• The issue of the new numbering application forms was also raised at the Numbering Forum on 10 April.

Other Action points would be addressed during the meeting.

Agenda Item 2 - BT Changes Under the April 2000 Contract Review

Keith Mitchinson (BT):

Presentation on BT Changes under the April 2000 Contract Review:

• Review Notices were sent out by BT to all operators on 29 June 2000.
• Discussions commenced with a Review team generally representative of the industry, which was nominated by the Operator Group.
• On completion of the discussions, on 16 February 2001 BT offered Supplemental Agreement to operators to amend the Interconnection Agreement between operators and BT.
• Those operators who had not signed the Supplemental Agreements by 28 March 2001 were referred to Oftel.
• A draft tabular summary including issues incorporated into the Supplemental, issues being pursued further and issues which were not included in the Supplemental were available on BTs website at: http://www.btinterconnect.com/

Discussion

Oftel:

Only 77 operators signed and returned Supplemental Agreements to BT before the deadline of 28 March 2001. On 2^nd April 2001, Oftel wrote to all of the operators referred by BT as non-signatories to the Supplemental Agreements. Oftel required operators' reasons for not signing the Agreements and ultimately may take the option of making a determination in the absence of operator agreement on the changes to the Standard Interconnect Contract.

Those Operators who have not yet responded to Oftel should do so as soon as possible. Operators who did not receive Oftel's letter should contact Andrew Walker at Oftel andrew.walker@oftel.gov.uk tel: 020 7634 8909 as soon as possible. AP 04/1.

Agenda Item 3 - BT/Operator Joint Working SLA Process Sub Group

Lois Nash (Orange):

Overview on the undertakings of BT/Operator joint working SLA process sub-group:

• The BT/operator joint working SLA process sub-group was established to take forward work arising out of the April 2000 Interconnect Agreement Review relating to BT performance issues associated with the provisioning of time-scales and processes for interconnect circuits contained within the Interconnect Agreement.
• The sub group aims to conclude its work by the end of August 2001 at which point, if still unresolved, outstanding issues may be referred to Oftel for determination.
• Further details including the sub-group Terms of Reference and minutes of sub-group meetings are available on the BT website at http://www.btinterconnect.com/

Discussion

Lois Nash:

In response to a question from Oftel, explained there was a deadline for nominations for joining the SLA process sub-group. However, if a non-member wished to raise a substantive issue for consideration by the sub group then it should be referred to Lois Nash. The same also applied at the sub-group working party (SWP) level.

Oftel:

Lois Nash will be invited back at an appropriate time to provide a SLA sub-group update to the OPF.

Agenda Item 4 - Retrospective billing for 96/97

Sara-Jane Amey (On behalf of Operators Group)

• A number of Operators received letters from BT dated 30 March 2001 informing of re-calculated charges for telephony and operator services for the periods 1 April 1996 to 31 March 1997 and 1 April 1997 to 30 September 1997.
• Operators were concerned at the time taken for BT to inform operators of the re-calculated charges; the general elementary nature of the calculations and the way that the amount of interest has been calculated on the net settlement amount. As a result some operators have requested that BT provide an explanation of the charges.

Discussion

BT:

BT needs to ensure that operators would be furnished with a sufficient explanation of the charges and that the re-priced charges and interest have been calculated correctly. Any operator requesting an explanation from BT who did not consider that they received a sufficient response should contact Graham Lamb (BT Regulatory Affairs).

Oftel:

Essentially this was considered to be a contractual dispute which, if no agreement could be reached between the parties, should be settled in court. It was noted that BT had agreed to look at operators concerns.

Agenda Item 5 - Focus Group updates

NTS

Geoff Brighton (Oftel) reported on behalf of the NTS Focus Group:

Report of the NTS Focus Group that met on Thursday 19 April. Issues raised would be put to BT not present at the meeting.

New NTS -Price Points

• Concern was expressed at the timescales BT applies to requests for new price points. Operators were asked to give their views on what reasonable timescales would be given the work involved in establishing new price points, including the need to ‘datafill’ all of BT’s exchanges.
• BT has introduced a new NTS pricing ladder with effect from 1 February, however, the meeting identified the following issues:

Operators were asked to provide specific examples of the failures listed above so that BT could be asked to comment.

Transit

• INCA could not distinguish between BT originated and transit calls and should be developed to flag transit calls to OLOs;
• Apparently BT can and will charge the originating operator for transit for 0844 and 0871 numbers, but not other NTS numbers. It is not clear why it is possible to do so for these numbers but not others.
• CLIs from other ONOs are not received by TNOs who can not identify the source of calls;
• BT was applying NCD’s to transit POLOs. The NCD used was that of the terminating operator whereas all originating operators interconnect at single tandem or very close to it. This incorrectly and unreasonably reduced POLOs.
• Although BT served transit invoices on terminating operators it rejected invoices served on it, for calls to BT’s NTS, by other transit operators.

INCA

• Graham Davies (Easynet) reported that although his company had volunteered for the INCA trial at BT’s request in October 2000 they had received no data for the period October to December 2000. They received some data in February but had to query it as indecipherable. Their BT Commercial Manager was unable to explain how the charges worked.
• As a consequence the general view was that INCA was not ready for use. OLOs could not develop their billing systems to work with it until BT could provide clear information. Particular problems existed with INCA’s inability to bill for transit and number portability. An inaccurate NCD proxy was unacceptable.

IN Charge

• The meeting confirmed that they were aware of BT’s policy of raising a ppm charge for the IN dip necessary to route calls to the 1k NTS number blocks Oftel was issuing in the interests of number conservation. No-one had seen the charge published, certainly not in BT’s Carrier Price list. This clearly was a Standard Charge and should be published.

Discussion

BT:

The structure of the NTS Price point ladder was also the subject of discussion at New Services Focus Group (BT/Operators Group). New Services Focus Group will contact Geoff Brighton to ensure that the two groups are not duplicating work.

Geographic and Non Geographic Number Portability

Report was circulated to the meeting.

Mobile Number Portability

Peter Roberts (Orange) reported on behalf on the Mobile Number Portability Focus Group

ORG

• Workshop met in March to review the MNP2 porting process manual. A new re-draft would be presented to ORG/Focus Group.

April quarterly ORG

• One specific Service Provider with problems will be invited to the next ORG in order to seek resolution.

Meetings would now be held monthly in run up to MNP2

MNP2 Delivery

• Main focus for April was completing the development phase, setting the web hosting environment and agreeing the UAT plan (issuing detailed spec tests).
• For the TDA (Tech Design Authority), security was the current focus, including issue and authentication of certificates, and logon security.
• IPG have agreed the training schedule, which will include 3 venues.
• In summary, milestanes were being met, there was no risks or issues. The effective Go/NoGo milestone was 20^th April, which should determine if the manual MNP process would be required.

Focus Group - Current Status

• Public launch of MNP2 on 30 September 2001 is confirmed.
• Agreement that if MNP encouraged bad debt, and if there was evidence of this, then there would be a formal review.
• Orange agreed to draft press release on behalf of the industry group. This would then be circulated to members and agreed prior to publication. It was agreed that it should be released through the FEI (Federation of Electronics Industries), since they had in the past issued joint operator statements. Oftel said they were happy to put out their own release expressing support for industry’s initiative

MNP2 Production Manager

• Role should be full time, and in place in time to help manage the MNP1 to MNP2 migration, and then ongoing. General view that this should be a specific responsibility and, probably, contracted out for at least an initial 6 month period to assess the role. The Project Board would further investigate costs.

New Chair

• Peter Roberts will be stepping down as the OPF-MNP-FG Chair and will be replaced by Frank Stewart, one2one.

Oftel:

Chris Kenny thanked Peter for his work during his tenure as Chair of the OPF-MNP-FG.

Carrier Pre-selection

Karen Hardy reported on behalf of the CPS Focus Group

Commercial Group

• Preparations for CPS Phase 2 were well underway following the launch of Phase 1 in December 2000. There were concerns about the amount of work to be completed in time for the December 2001 launch for Phase 2. Process and other CPS Groups would look at all issues in order to understand what needs to be done for Phase 2.
• Next meeting of the Process Group will take place on 1 May.

Process Group

• Substantial work had been completed in revising the End to End process manual and it was hoped that a new version, probably version 7, would soon be available on the Oftel website.

• Dialogue was continuing between BT and Oftel on the implementation of Reseller Process. BT has been asked for timescale for development of a Reseller process.

• A new Chair of the Process Group is sought to replace Chris Garbett (CWC) who was due to step down.

Process Improvement Group

• A revised industry position would be formulated on consumer protection legislation and if a CPS-specific cooling off period was necessary. This would be presented at the next Consumer Group meeting on 16 May.

Triallist Group

• CPS Phase 1 Triallist Group has been disbanded and would be replaced by a new Triallist Group Chaired by Thus for CPS Phase 2 trials. Three triallists have been selected for Phase 2.

PNOIG Technical Task Group

• This Group had previously concentrated efforts on the testing apect of Phase 1. However, this Group still needed volunteers from operators with technical expertise. Any suitable volunteers should contact Karen Hardy (Energis) or Caroline Wallace (Oftel).

Interim Carrier Pre-selection

Wendy Dodd reported on behalf of the ICPS Focus Group

Agenda Item 6 - Forthcoming and Recent Publications

Chris Kenny informed the meeting of forthcoming publications:

• Decision on Oftel's Competition Act investigation into BT Talk and Surf Together product
• Funds for liabilities (consultation)
• Business consumer research
• Northern Ireland equality scheme (consultation)
• Number portability functional specification
• Draft determination of price for shared loops
• Updated LLU guidelines
• Residential consumer research
• Internet access market review (consultation)
• Oftel's Welsh language scheme
• Personal numbering (consultation)

Agenda Item 7 - AOB

Oftel:

Two further action points outstanding from the previous meeting:

Modem co-location (AP 03/1)

• Now BT had clarified that modems were not co-located in each of their local exchanges, the situation may have changed. Oftel intends to take no further action unless operators make submissions to BT.

FRIACO overflow and 64k Granularity (AP 03/2)

• No responses to date have been received on how overflow between DLE and ST routes would work including dimensioning rules and the management of excessive peaks.

IP Interconnection

• No further 'public meetings' would be held on this but progress will be reported back to OPF and OIF.

BT:

BT agreed to provide update at the forthcoming OPF on BT restructuring.

NAP 04/2

BT agreed to give a presentation at the forthcoming OPF on BT Network congestion.

NAP 04/3

Next Meeting

Next meeting will be on Thursday 7 June commencing at 2:30pm

3.   Action Points

ACTION POINTS: OPF - 26 April 2001