Right, who feels like going to an Ofcom meeting? Anyone? Bueller? Ofcom has released a draft of its plans for 2015 and 2016, promising to protect citizens, as well as allow them to express a view on developments, which is nice. The final plan will be published in March, but the draft allows interested parties to express a view, to be aired at one of a series of public meetings which you can …
Make phone companies run the caller ID incoming calls past a database of allocated numbers, and refuse the termination if an invalid number appears. (This will save calls from impossible numbers which all seem to be some mumbling indian chap)
07050 isn't really a problem, 070 is known to be (and has always been) personal numbering rather than mobile.
Stop stupid rules like Openreach not being able to talk to other bits of BT: it's the same company and should be able to do whatever is necessary to fix faults. FAST.
(Controversially) Tell the EU to stuff it, bring back BABT and require landline equipment in the UK to at least meet some kind of standard. The amount of 2 wire crap that responds to dial pulsing as ringing is ridiculous.
"Make phone companies run the caller ID incoming calls past a database of allocated numbers, and refuse the termination if an invalid number appears. (This will save calls from impossible numbers which all seem to be some mumbling indian chap)"
You want a global real-time number database? That's going to require quite some effort to set up and maintain. It doesn't even solve the problem of spam calls - how does your database stop someone in the Bahamas or Latvia or Chad or a hundred other places spoofing a source number that actually appears in the list?
Ha!
All these inbound calls are charged for by the UK telco to the international call broker. Somebody has an accounting trail, and should be obliged to use it to produce a sensible caller ID value (not necessarily the actual caller ID, just one that can be associated with the calling organisation for regulation purposes).
And, coupled with that, ensure that there is real enforcement effort devoted to eliminating unwanted cold calling. Not the current awkward buckpassing between OfCom and the ICO.
And finally, the allocated caller ID should be good enough that criminals making fraudulent international "boiler room" style calls can be traced.
If this information is not available (and with much hand-wringing, it won't), the UK telco should be obliged to simply not accept and route the call. And live with the resulting revenue loss.
Oink, Flap.
"You want a global real-time number database? "
No we want a stop to overseas callers spoofing UK STD numbers usually with ranges that do not exist.
Add t the the inalienable right for ME as the rental payer for the line to refuse to accept termination of calls from overseas. I don't deal with companies that have off shore centres but I get s many spam calls from outside of the UK where unscrupulous UK companies deliberately farm (Illegal) cold call work to avoid regulations in the UK
OH and introduce a requirement that a line should perform at n% or its likely technical capability for broadband, so where a line should be "technically capable" of 10 megs it should do at least 7.5 or something and stop Openjoke hiding behind excuses for knackered copper dodgy joins and ally crud in circuits- we pay line rental we have a right to a reasonable quality of service surely? Given that many lines (like mine) now only exist to support Broadband its time the rules recognized this,
Finally Stop the SFI con, if you are being charged for an SFI then the guy should be better qualified than a plain old engineer, and if the issue ISN'T down to you then there should be NO charge, Unlike what is happening up and down the country today.
It is time to stop BT acting like the abusive virtual monopoly it is in many places. and if that hurts the shareholders TOUGH, we are paying through the nose for a second rate service much of the time. Itr needs to stop and OFCOM need to grow a pair, man up and finally bring BT group to heel - not that they will... its too comfy getting along like old chums.
"Stop stupid rules like Openreach not being able to talk to other bits of BT: it's the same company and should be able to do whatever is necessary to fix faults. FAST."
But - erm - that would mean BT customers get priority over non-BT customers and it was preventing such a thing happening that led to the setting up of Openreach in the first place.
If phone customers know that a BT line gets fixed in a day and a Talk Talk one gets fixed in a week, what do you think that does to the market?
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