WARNING, WCLI (Wholesale Calls) - the 'dangerous' version of CPS (Carrier PreSelect)

Heinz

Most reading this will already be aware of WCLI (Wholesale Calls) - the new 'restrictive' version of CPS (Carrier PreSelect) - and how it allows the calls provider to 'ignore' the subscriber using the 1280 prefix even though they still pay line rental to BT.

I had been hoping that Ofcom would get back to Martin on this matter following his meeting with them last month but, it appears, that isn't going to happen. TBH, I'm in two minds as to whether this results from Ofcom prevaricating or Martin either not asking or not asking the right question. Whatever the reason, we are left having to piece together snippets of information from various sources to try to establish exactly what is going on.

At the moment, it appears that:

Calls providers can now provide their end customers with their calls either via Carrier Pre-Selection (CPS) or Wholesale Calls (WCLI) - the calls provider decides which.

In the case of CPS, BT Wholesale sells CPS to the network provider (BT Retail) who, in turn, sells it on to the end communications provider (e.g. Primus).

In the case of WCLI, BT Wholesale sells direct to the end communications provider (e.g. Sky).

However, CPS and WCLI are different products, and work in completely different ways.

CPS routes calls off the BT network, whereas WCLI routes calls across the BT network. CPS can, therefore, be described as a "switch" product and WCLI as a "billing" product.

The code 1280, when dialled as a prefix by a CPS user, re-routes the call off the call provider's network and onto the BT network - resulting in the subscriber being billed by BT for the call.

In the case of WCLI, that re-routing cannot take place because the call is already on the BT network. That is why BT Wholesale can state it is not preventing calls being made using 1280 (or permitting Sky to ignore the prefix) and that it is not preventing BT Retail subscribers from making use of the calls Plan (typically the Unlimited Weekend Plan) for which they are paying as part of their line rental.

But it gets worse.

It has now been established that WCLI calls providers have the 'power' to 'instruct' BT Retail to make a subscriber's line outgoing calls barred (OCB) should there be an unpaid billing issue (and, presumably, that incliudes a disputed bill issue). So now the likes of Sky can give orders to BT!

Incredible.

DesG

Is there a list of who is using WCLI anywhere? So they can be avoided!

Cheers, Des.

Hazzanet

Those who are with Primus and are worried that they may change to WCLI may be interested in this.

I asked BT Retail to take my calls back (as the service from Primus and the billing recently seems to have gone to pot) so Primus sent me a letter saying that CPS will cease. I called Primus and asked, with CPS ending, would my account with them automatically be closed - the answer was no; I needed to write and close it.

I then asked , if I wanted to and I still had an account with them, whether there was any way to route calls with them e.g. an override code. I was told yes: dial 1457 before your calls.

I hope that helps someone out there - I'll give it a try tomorrow when my calls go back to BT and let you know whether it works.

KimYeovil

Why is this a bad thing? Surely this could create a more level and balanced pricing structure? It may be interesting and entertaining to cherry-pick individual types of call from different providers but this is reflected in higher costs from their other calls or can not be sustained indefinitely. If the company is efficiently run then they can place the savings across the board.

Heinz

KimYeovil wrote: »

Why is this a bad thing? Surely this could create a more level and balanced pricing structure? It may be interesting and entertaining to cherry-pick individual types of call from different providers but this is reflected in higher costs from their other calls or can not be sustained indefinitely. If the company is efficiently run then they can place the savings across the board.

That's certainly one point of view.

However, it's the deceit that annoys - why didn't Sky have the common decency to advise their CPS customers it was moving the goalposts - it resulted in some being charged for Caller Display and/or basic 1571) and having to pay Sky's excessive charges for 0845 and 0870 calls when they thought they were doing the money-saving thing by using the 1280 prefix.

Update 3-8-09. Sky now includes 0870 calls in its Sky Talk call packages.

http://www.sky.com/Assets/PDF/StaticFiles/5434510.pdf

System

Many thanks Heinz for getting to the bottom of this. I have now emailed Ofcom as follows:

Sorry, I now think I got some of this wrong. According to the lore that is emerging on the web, the point is that WCLI is a "billing product". After a (for example) Skytalk CPS customer has been slammed onto WCLI, all calls are, by default, automatically routed via BT's network and billed by BT Wholesale to Sky (who in turn bill the customer, notably at Sky's ripoff rates for calls to 0845 and 0870). After the slamming, it is not true that 1280 is "not available". 1280 is just interpreted by the exchange as supererogatory confirmation that the call is to be routed via the BT network. Meanwhile, at the least for the time being, Sky is still allowing other IACs (such as 18185) to work as the customer expects.

If that is (more or less) right, then it appears to me that BT Wholesale's WCLI is a fundamentally flawed product, designed to remove the citizen-consumer's choice. Customers who are paying BT Retail for a "calling plan" which, of course, includes some calls, are being billed instead by Sky for those calls.

It is as if Tesco me offered a discount provided I allowed my satnav to be programmed with the route to Tesco. Thinking I know the way to Sainsbury and can drive there over-riding the satnav, I go along with this. For a while, I happily use Sainsbury for items that Sainsbury sell cheaper. Then one day at the checkout Sainsbury say "Sorry, Tesco have signed up to Wholesale Groceries Store Independent. You can have this stuff, but Tesco will bill you for it at their prices."

Is Ofcom going to take action to stop this scam? If not, why not?

System

Kim Yeovil raises a fair question, why is it a bad thing? My answer would be that consumers will get a better deal if telephone calls are sold like bananas than if they are sold like gas. If you like, you can always buy your bananas from Tesco, and Tesco will then try to bundle them with expensive raspberry tart. But you retain your freedom to buy your bananas from a market stall. As a result, bananas are cheap.

In contrast, you have to sign up to one company at a time for all your gas. That has not resulted in low prices. In theory, there could be Russian gas lorries in your street offering you cheap gas this week. If there were, that would bring down prices.

bunking_off

To elaborate on YoungNick's analogy, what's happening with WCLI is the same as Tesco hiding the bananas in that raspberry tart box and only telling you once you've taken them out of the shop that you have to pay for them. With WCLI, the customer dials 1280 and thinks that the calls have been sold via BTRetail and will be priced as such, when in reality they've been sold by Sky.

To give adequate customer protection, (a) Sky should inform customers that signing up to them removes the ability to over-ride to 1280, and (b) prefixing 1280 should result in an announcement being played and the call not being completed. Reality is that (b) isn't technically easy, so what should be done is that BTW should fix their billing system so that the call detail records are correctly streamed to BTR when there's an 1280 prefix, rather than handed to Sky....but that's not easy either.

Couple of corrections to Heinz's otherwise excellent description :

1) For CPS, BTW send calls to another network provider, who sell the service to your service provider who then bills you. In some cases, the network and service provider may be one & the same (e.g. Carphone), but increasingly they're different. For Sky prior to the migration, I think THUS were the network provider, Sky the service provider. Whatever, BTR are not involved in CPS...it's a relationship between BTW and the network provider.

2) The code 1280 doesn't reroute the call off the provider network back onto BT. It prevents the call ever being routed to the CPS provider network in the first place. From a technical standpoint, if you've got CPS, what happens is there's configuration against your line which (unless you dial a 1xxx over-ride prefix) results in a network internal prefix (of the form 8xxxx) being added to the number you dialled, which routes calls to the CPS provider network. If you dial an over-ride code such as 18185, that results in the 8xxxx prefix not being applied, hence the call is routed using your 18185 prefix to your over-ride provider's network. I'm guessing the one exception to this is 1280, which probably simply results in no prefix being applied, i.e. the 1280 prefix is stripped on the originating exchange and call is routed via BT.

Now, we come onto WCLI. As Heinz says, this is simply a billing arrangement. BTW continue to route the calls, but rather than the calls being billed via BTR, they're billed by the service provider concerned (e.g. Sky). If my guess is correct and 1280 simply prevents calls going to a 3rd party network but is stripped at the originating exchange, this means that in the call detail record generated by the originating exchange, there's no retention of the fact that you dialled 1280, so the call is billed to Sky, along with all the others. I can see BTW's issue and there's no easy fix (*)...but clearly this is to the end-user's detriment.

(*) Easiest approach would be to retain the 1280 in the cdr, then have their billing system differentially bill to BTR or Sky according to the presence of the 1280. However, billing systems are notoriously difficult to make "simple" changes like that to.

Incidentally, the WCLI service provider has no power to tell BTR to make the line outgoing calls barred as they have no relationship with BTR...they can, however, do this with BTW who ultimately are the people who'd apply the bar.

System

Thanks for your fascinating post, bunking_off.

Could you elaborate on one detail? I thought that if I dial 18185 my calls gets routed to Finarea's switch, which then forwards it by whatever network is dumping cheap calls on the market that day (or, as the case may be, to a recording of barking dogs etc) Or have I got that completely wrong?

alan99_2

Hazzanet wrote: »

Those who are with Primus and are worried that they may change to WCLI may be interested in this.

I asked BT Retail to take my calls back (as the service from Primus and the billing recently seems to have gone to pot) so Primus sent me a letter saying that CPS will cease. I called Primus and asked, with CPS ending, would my account with them automatically be closed - the answer was no; I needed to write and close it.

I then asked , if I wanted to and I still had an account with them, whether there was any way to route calls with them e.g. an override code. I was told yes: dial 1457 before your calls.

I hope that helps someone out there - I'll give it a try tomorrow when my calls go back to BT and let you know whether it works.

Hi

When I first joined Primus I was told I had to have CPS with them (BT line rental) to have penny mobile. I was told the 1457 prefix would not allow penny mobile.(for a new customer)

Alan

Heinz

alan99 wrote: »

When I first joined Primus I was told I had to have CPS with them (BT line rental) to have penny mobile. I was told the 1457 prefix would not allow penny mobile.(for a new customer)

I don't think there's any need (yet) to worry about Primus 'doing a Sky' and slamming subscribers from CPS to WCLI. I received the following from them on 6 August and although we're a cynical lot on MSE, I see no reason (yet) to doubt the content. Oh heck, that's two yets in one paragraph:

Thank you for your email. We can assure that we currently have no intention of making any such changes to our CPS service. If we were to make any such changes to the service, then we would inform you prior to doing so.
Best regards
Customer Services
Primus Telecommunications