Mobile calls to get much cheaper - probably UK regulator Ofcom has published proposals to cut the mobile termination rate significantly and make changing networks quicker, but stopped short of routing calls directly. A lower termination rate should see cheaper calls to mobiles - £800m cheaper according to Ofcom. Under the proposals customers will be able to get a PAC …
They're the biggest single problem, as far as I'm concerned.
I have a package suitable for my usage in terms of volume, I never go over my inclusive minutes. But I **ALWAYS** end up paying more due to 0800, 0845, 0870 etc numbers, none of which are included in the inclusive minutes, and are charged at normal rates on top.
It's fine when I'm at home, and I can look up alternative numbers, but when I'm out and about and need to call someone on one of those numbers fairly quickly, I end up paying extra. And 0800 numbers are never the quickest to be answered, so I'm paying extra whilst being told that my call is important to them. The "Say No to 0870" site is a pig to use when on a GPRS connection.
I find it unlikely that calling (e.g.) from my O2 mobile to a Vodafone mobile costs O2 so much less than calling an 0800 number that the first can be included in my bundle, and the second can't.
This ought to make 0800 numbers cheaper from mobile phones - even free. With 0800 the destination picks up the call cost, and they are probably not prepared to do so if that includes a 4.5p per minute termination charge (against the small fraction of a penny they pay per minute for incoming landlines).
However, I say should - just what the mobile operator will do is another thing. Theory would be that if the termination charge is only 0.5p per minute, then that's what they should charge the 0800 operator, but who knows.
There also ought (in principle) to be similar drops for calls to 0845, 0870 and hte like. It's well known that call centres do revenue sharing to subsidise their costs.
It depends what the regulator mandates, if anything. Ofcom might just leave it for the market to sort out (in the sense that different mobile operators might choose to use these numbers. This already happens on landlines where there are different charges for 0845/0870 (but not 0800) by different operators.
I claim my prize - a real story. In fact it is calls to mobiles from fixed line/VOIP that should benefit. Calls from mobiles are a different thing - it will be interesting to see how the mobile companies seek to recover some of that lost revenues from fixed line calls into their networks (the mobile to mobile stuff tendedc to balance out for the big operators).
PAYG customers might also suffer. Perhaps the mobile phone companies will also cut back on all those subsidised equipment deals. Not such good news if you are Nokia, Apple and the like.
3 gave you the answer: "more unlimited bundles".
Those'll be the ones where the vast majority of the subscribers don't use anywhere near the capacity they're paying a shitload for each month and the minority that try to find that the actual value of "unlimited" is rather less than they had assumed.
this is the real April fools story or Ofcom are belatedly showing some Cojones prior to their imminent demise at the hands of the quango-smashing Tories.
Tessa Jowell to Lord Currie: You know the consumer protection part of your remit? Could you show a little more activity before 6th May? Pretty please?
However awkward the current PAC system is - the prospect of a network being able to request a transfer is lethal.
Three times I have had gas and electricity accounts erroneously or mendaciously transferred to an unhelpful operator. It takes weeks to sort with authorisations, reseting up debits et al. The ideal would be a customer owned number - where you decide which network it is to be allocated too directly and can rescue if the operator disappears (as some MVNOs have done).
Pity Ofcomm always think of the operator, rarely the customer which may be one reason the ducked out of the central database idea.
When the last review took place c10 years ago to reduce from the existing 4-5 weeks to 5 days, it was donor-led. OFCOM (and the networks) were very concerned at the prospect of slamming - we were seeing enough of it even with the fax-based, long-wided system we had in place at that time. It was also a real concern because of (e.g.) door-to-door energy and telephone salesmen doing that, which was hitting the news over and over.
One of the biggest problems was the proliferation of independent phone shops that were everywhere and had a lifespan of about a year before they disappeared, after which the owner could never be found. At least that's less of a problem now, though I'm not sure whether the domination of the market by the big chains doesn't cause more problems than it solves.
(I was at O2 at the time, and was involved with the creation of MNP2 as it was known)
It doesn't quite work like that Stuart. We already have this centralised system where I live and, if you go to another network to request a change, they contact your current network and you get an SMS with a code. So you have to have the SIM for the phone number being transferred in order to carry out the transfer. Rogue operators cannot just request your account be transferred to them without your knowing.
It works brilliantly. As soon as the system was brought in, I and most of my family immediately switched from the incumbent to one of the new providers and it happened in about an hour.
You misread my post and I have several times successfully used the existing transfer method. My point was this push method is preferable to a pull policy which is open to abuse by slamming. Indeed it would be good if electricity & gas companies had to have a PAC.
But the best system is if the number is issued to you. You control it and can switch it to the network of choice. They just have to agree to accept your number.
I bet we either lose 12 month contracts completely (they are pretty rare anyway) and 18 months contracts will become harder to get as operators move to 24 or 36 month contracts to make their pound of flesh on the deal.
I also expect high end phones will stop being free, the iPhone has shown people will pay, how long before it moves to all other phones?
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