The end of 070 numbers

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Posted: Wed Apr 04, 2007 12:52 pm

Just been watching Working Lunch on telly and it looks like Ofcom are going to get rid of the 070 personal 'follow me' numbers that we and scammers use.

After a bit of digging around the Ofcom site, I found this:

Quote:

1.23 Personal Numbering Services are provided on one specific part of the 07 range (070). Ofcom has several concerns about these services. There is very limited consumer awareness of �Personal Numbers� as a concept, and legitimate personal numbering services have had relatively little market impact. At the same time there have been a number of cases where providers have run �scams� by exploiting the poor awareness of this range and the prices charged. This is despite previous attempts to restore trust in personal numbers .

1.24 Ofcom is therefore now introducing a requirement that will provide a degree of protection to consumers calling personal numbers. If a call to a 070 number costs more than 20p (per minute or per call), customers will receive a free-to-caller pre-call announcement about the charge involved. Ofcom is conducting a short further consultation (see paragraph 1.30 to 1.31) with a view to making this apply to calls from all CPs on all lines � whether from a BT line, any other fixed line, a mobile or a payphone. Subject to the outcome of this consultation, and given the time needed to implement this requirement, we expect this obligation to be met by all CPs from Autumn 2007. Whilst the exact wording of the pre-announcement may differ between CPs, we would expect all customers to be better protected by this measure.

1.25 We have already decided to end the scope for confusion with mobile numbers in the longer term, by ending the use of 070 for personal numbers. The �06� ranges of numbers has instead been earmarked to meet future demand for such numbers. A pre-call announcement system would also be expected to apply to 06 numbers.

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