Chapter 2 – What directory services are available today?
Chapter 3 – How could these services be improved in the future?
Chapter 4 – Giving you more choices
Chapter 5 – Protecting the privacy of your directory information
Chapter 6 – Providing more complete directory services
Chapter 7 – New numbers for directory enquiry services
Chapter 8 – Your views
Please send your views by post, fax or e-mail to:
Andrea Konrath
Oftel
50 Ludgate Hill
London EC4M 7JJ
Fax: 0171 634 8893
Email: crs.oftel@gtnet.gov.uk
We need your views by 31 December 1997. There will then be an opportunity for you to send us your views on other people's comments by 16 January 1998. If you want to read other people's comments you can make an appointment to visit Oftel's library to see them. Appointments must be made in advance (tel: 0171 634 8762/8765, fax: 0171 634 8946).
If you would like to come and discuss your views and hear the views of others there will a public workshop in London on Monday 10 November 1997. If you want to attend this please contact Elizabeth Watts at Oftel (tel: 0171 634 8770) for further details.
Visually impaired customers who would like the text of this booklet on computer disk should contact Elizabeth Watts at Oftel (tel: 0171 634 8770).
2 This booklet summarises our proposals about services and products such as your phone book and directory enquiry services, and looks at ways these can be improved. It discusses how you could be given more rights about the ways in which your directory information is used – for example, how you could opt out of your directory information being used for telesales. It also looks at the trend of more customers going ex-directory and what might be done about this.
3 This booklet gives details of what Oftel thinks the key issues are for customers. If you want more details of our proposals you should obtain a copy of our consultative document – Provision of Directory Information Services and Products (tel: 0171 634 8770). Because these proposals are about your information and the services you use we would welcome your views. These views will help us decide the best way forward to meet your needs.
5 If you want a residential number then you have less choice. The number you want is probably held on BT's main database which contains information on BT's customers and the customers of most other telecommunications companies. But this information is only available to customers in a limited number of ways and the services are provided by a limited choice of companies – mainly by BT. Directory information about residential customers is available in phone books and through the 192 directory enquiry service. BT's phone books are updated every 18 months and so do not contain the latest information. BT produces a CD-ROM called Phone Disc, but this is quite expensive unless you need to use directories a lot. BT also provides an on-line directory service called Phone Base which can be accessed using a computer and modem.
6 When you look for a residential number, there is no guarantee you will find it because more and more residential customers are choosing not to have their phone numbers listed. The proportion of residential customers with ordinary phone lines who are ex-directory has increased from 24% in 1991 to 37% in 1997. This national average varies across the country. As the graph shows more than half of residential customers in London are ex-directory.
7 If you are looking for a mobile number it is unlikely that you will be able to find it at all as less than 1% of mobile numbers are available from most directory enquiry services. Numbers for other services such as freephone numbers, premium rate services, personal numbers or faxes are generally not available from directory enquiry services.
Figure: Geogrphic variation in residential entries ex-directory levels
| Phone books
Could be organised and produced in ways which would give you more choice about the area covered and how often they are updated. There could be different companies publishing different phone books so that you could choose which one to buy. At the moment you automatically pay for a phone book as part of your line rental. You might want a choice of not having a phone book and having a lower phone bill instead. Or you might like alternatives such as a number of calls to directory enquiry services paid for as part of your line rental instead of a phone book. Directory enquiry services You could have a choice of companies providing different services at different prices eg services offering different numbers of searches for a set fee, services which will find numbers say for plumbers or chemists in a particular area, or services that will track down a business number from anywhere in the UK and not be restricted to searching in a particular town. Call completion services could be offered which would involve you calling the directory enquiries operator and then having the operator connect your call to the number you want without giving you the number. The person being contacted would have the option of not accepting the call. You may find this convenient as you would not have to dial the number, and the person you are calling might be less concerned about privacy if their number was not given out. New services New services could emerge such as a directory service on the Internet which would enable you to enter a name and address to find a phone number. This option is already available in a number of overseas countries and is available for business directory information in the UK. |
12 Our research suggests that if ex-directory customers were given more choices about how their directory information is used they might be more willing to have their information available from directory enquiry services. For example, our research suggests that:
| 1 Full listing in all directory services and products.
2 Listed in directory enquiry services only. 3 Listed in a call completion directory enquiry service which will not give out your number but instead the directory enquiries operator will directly put through the caller and give you the option of accepting the call. 4 Ex-directory. 5 The choice of having only part of your address listed. 6 The choice of having no indication of your gender. 7 The option of not having your directory information used for direct marketing (see next section). |
15 The Telephone Preference Service already offers a means of reducing the number of telemarketing calls you receive. You can join the Telephone Preference Service by contacting your telephone company. The Telephone Preference Service will then arrange for your telephone number to be removed from the databases of many of the companies carrying out telemarketing. However, general awareness of the Telephone Preference Service is low. Our research found that only 10% of residential customers were aware of its existence. Nearly half ( 49%) of those who were unaware of its existence said that they would be interested in joining a scheme to reduce unwanted telesales calls. Industry membership of the Telephone Preference Service is voluntary and so not all companies which carry out telemarketing are involved.
16 To meet the requirements of proposed European legislation and meet customers' concerns about their directory information being used for direct marketing, we propose that:
19 We think customers should be given the choice of not receiving and paying for a phone book if they do not want one. This would mean your telephone company separating the cost of your phone book from your line rental on your telephone bill. Anyone who did not want a phone book could then opt not to receive one. This change would also enable other publishers of phone books to compete with BT. We believe that this could help to stimulate innovation and improve the quality of phone books for the benefit of customers. There is scope for improving phone books – for example, phone books could be updated more frequently, and customers could choose the geographic area they wanted their phone book to cover.
21 The starting point for developing these draft rules has been customers' existing expectations of ways in which their directory information is used. These expectations are broadly that:
23 Unless you have agreed to your directory information being used for other purposes, are ex-directory, or have chosen one of the options discussed earlier which limits what your information can be used for, we propose that your directory information will only be permitted to be used for the services and products set out below.
| 1 Printed telephone directories which are ordered alphabetically by
name.
2 Directories which can be used on computers eg CD-ROMs. 3 Directory enquiry services. 4 On-line directory services, which could include, for example, a directory service on the Internet. 5 Bulk services in which numbers are added to existing name and address lists (Phone Base is currently used to provide this sort of service). The services and products listed at (2) to (5) will require the person wanting your number to provide your name and address details first. |
Treatment of ex-directory customers' information
25 When you use directory enquiry services, the directory enquiries operator will usually tell you if the number you require is ex-directory rather than saying that it is "not listed". In order to do this the database used by the operator needs to contain the name and address details of ex-directory customers. If other companies are going to develop equivalent services then they will need to receive the names and addresses of ex-directory customers (but they would not need ex-directory customers' phone numbers). To help us decide how ex-directory customer information should be treated we need to know how important it is to you to have directory enquiry services which give positive confirmation that a number is ex-directory rather than "not listed" which could mean a variety of things (eg the customer does not have a phone, the name and address details you gave were incorrect, they have no listing on the database or they are ex-directory). There are two options:-
Option A: It is not important that directory enquiry services can positively confirm that a customer is ex-directory, and it is more important to preserve the privacy of ex-directory customers by not making their name and address details available to other companies; or
Option B: It is important that directory enquiry services can positively confirm that a customer is ex-directory, and therefore the name and address details of ex-directory customers (but not their phone numbers) should be available to other companies solely for use in connection with directory enquiry services.
27 Our research shows that customers would like more types of numbers included in directory services:
30 Our proposed solution to this is to move all directory enquiry services to new five digit numbers. Two numbers have been considered, 118XX or 192XX. The XX would be numbers to identify companies providing directory enquiry services (eg Company A could have the number 11811, Company B could have the number 11812 and so on). Although 192XX may be easier for customers to remember it would create serious technical difficulties and delay the introduction of new services. For these reasons we propose that 118XX is used for directory enquiry services. This has the advantage that it is the number which Europe is likely to recommend be used for directory enquiry services. Obviously this represents a change for customers. But in the longer term, by enabling competition, the change should help customers to have greater choice, quality and value for money from new services.
Cover design by Evans May Partnership
