EE Text Charges to School

Ian011

When challenged, the school's provider will likely say they "accidentally" allocated a Channel Islands number and will then change it to something else.

grumbler

Have some UK operators, e.g. Lycamobile, stopped issuing "Channel Islands numbers" without making it clear to their customers?

Ian011

The issue with Lyca and others some years ago was not that the numbers were allocated in CI or IoM but simply that the Termination Rate was far in excess of that for calls and texts terminating on the main mobile networks.

In the 1990s Termination Rates for calls to mobile numbers were in excess of 25p per minute. As these rates fell, providers started to offer inclusive calls to other mobile networks, but omitted calls to networks with the highest MTRs. Where a mobile network sets a high MTR for incoming calls, the additional revenue earned allows that network to charge a lower amount for outgoing calls - but other networks then excluded calls and texts to that network from their own inclusive call and text allowances.

A number of call-forwarding and other automated 'non-mobile' services also used various mobile numbers with high termination rates. As before, this revenue funded provision of the service. Their termination rates remained high and these numbers remained non-inclusive from other networks as did genuine mobile numbers located offshore.

By 2009, the MTR for calls to the main UK mobile networks had fallen to around 4p per minute. At this point, Ofcom intervened and has forced further annual reductions. This rate cap applied only to calls terminating on the main mobile networks. Other networks were told to charge 'fair and reasonable rates'. Some continued to set MTRs as high as 15p per minute and calls to these networks remained non-inclusive.

In May 2015, the MTR cap was further reduced to 0.68p per minute and, crucially, the cap was extended to cover ALL mainland UK mobile numbers. Accordingly, the various call-forwarding and other 'non-mobile' services using mobile numbers in an inappropriate manner have had to change their business model. Most have either closed down or migrated to a more suitable number range.

The MTR will be reduced again on 1 April 2016. At that point it will be 0.51p per minute. The MTR cap from 1 April 2017 onwards will be just a fraction below 0.51p per minute. In just a few weeks time the termination rate for calls to mobile numbers will be below the termination rate for calls to 03 numbers, which is currently 0.56p per minute.

The recent MTR reductions have resulted in landline providers starting to offer inclusive calls to standard UK mobile numbers. This will become commonplace during the next year or so.

Termination rates for mobile numbers allocated in CI and IoM are still around 1.2p to 1.5p per minute and this is why calls to these numbers continue to remain non-inclusive.

Table 5 and 7 in this Ofcom document may be useful:
http://stakeholders.ofcom.org.uk/binaries/consultations/mobile-call-termination-14/statement/MCT_final_statement.pdf

grumbler

Ian011 wrote: »

The issue with Lyca and others some years ago was not that the numbers were allocated in CI or IoM but simply that the Termination Rate was far in excess of that for calls and texts terminating on the main mobile operators.

Well, IIRC the excuse/explanation T-Mobile used for charging for calls to some Lyca numbers was exactly that the numbers were "CI".

Ian011

Yes. Never under-estimate the ability of a salesperson or callcentre operative to make something up that sounds plausible - but which falls over on inspection of the relevant Ofcom spreadsheet of number allocations.

The issue was the high termination rate.



See also
https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/5425727

[Deleted User]

It's like when all these doctors surgerys were sold a system that used incoming 0845/0844 numbers...

Ian011

Six years after GP practice 'GMS' and 'PMS' contracts were revised to ban that, hundreds of practices are still using them.

http://www.google.com/search?num=100&q=site:nhs.uk+inurl:MapsAndDirections+%22premium+rate%22
http://www.google.com/search?num=100&q=site:nhs.uk+inurl:MapsAndDirections+%22Access+Charge%22