Why 18866 & 1899 Don't Offer CPS Facility?

bbb_uk

I noticed the following on the SayNoTo0870.com forum (posted by NonGeographicalMan) here. I've copied this and pasted below for ease of reference:-

For those of you who wondered why 18866 and 1899 do not offer the convenience of CPS this latest announcement on the Ofcom website provides some rather illuminating facts and figures on the costs of an outfit like 18866 using the CPS service.

http://www.ofcom.org.uk/consult/condocs/carrier/statement/

The latest review and direction from Ofcom has cut the initial startup cost of getting BT to set up a CPS service for an outfit like 18866 but has completely negated this with even higher ongoing monthly running charges.

Ofcom's changes only make things any better for the big boys like TalkTalk because they have cut over £1 a customer off the signup cost to be paid to BT - this goes down from £3.79 to £2.72

But the bottom line is that for any telco to rent a CPS facility off BT costs an initial £13,449 setup and then £2,418 monthly line rental. In addition the CPS providers now pay £2.72 for every extra CPS customer they add to the service.

So if you are TalkTalk with expensive call prices and may be a million CPS customers these CPS costs are affordable but if you are 18866 or 1899 with no advertising budget, small margins and a small customer base these costs are absolutely not affordable.

Looks like we will all be dialling 18866 or 1899 for a while to come. Its still a lot more convenient than dialling an 0844 number and then waiting for an announcement before you can dial the next number.

It is now going to cost a CPS provider £29,012 a year in CPS charges and this doesn't include initial setup costs of £13,448 for the CPS service, office space rental, staff's wages, call centre equipment, per customer activation fee, etc.

As stated by NonGeographicalMan, I believe this answers the common question of why Call18866/1899 don't offer a CPS service, and probably why the likes of OneTel, etc don't keep doing those special offers of free evening&weekend minutes with no monthly fee!?!?

Aiadi

Just get yourself an Orchid dialler and hey presto, problem solved.
It would give you all the flexibility you need to route your calls through whichever carrier without the need to dial any prefix numbers. If you use CPS then all your calls would be forced (more or less) to go through a single carrier (unless once again you dial a prefix) and that would be a problem if you are using 4 or 5 different carriers.

the_devil_made_me_do_it

explain what a cps is please

derrick

the_devil_made_me_do_it wrote:

explain what a cps is please

CPS ( carrier pre-selection) when you use anothe telco to route your calls automatically instead of using BT, i.e Talk talk, One Tel

the_devil_made_me_do_it

ah i see. Well I gotta say that I ain't too bothered to be honest, 18866/1899 calls are cheap enough, and the orchid dialler will pay for itself in no time :T

bbb_uk

Aiadi wrote:

Just get yourself an Orchid dialler and hey presto, problem solved...

I already have one thanks.

I only started the post so for those that may have been wondering why don't Call18866/1899 offer CPS facility as well as the likes of TalkTalk, OneTel, Tele2, etc - now they know. Basically, it can be really expensive for Call18866/1899 to offer CPS facilities instead of just Indirect Access codes.

Aiadi

bbb_uk wrote:

I already have one thanks.

I only started the post so for those that may have been wondering why don't Call18866/1899 offer CPS facility as well as the likes of TalkTalk, OneTel, Tele2, etc - now they know. Basically, it can be really expensive for Call18866/1899 to offer CPS facilities instead of just Indirect Access codes.

Right but what I couldn't understand is that if 18888/1899 are better as they are, then why should they attempt to copy TalkTalk, OneTel ...etc. Call me thick but I really can't get your point.

bbb_uk

Aiadi wrote:

Right but what I couldn't understand is that if 18888/1899 are better as they are, then why should they attempt to copy TalkTalk, OneTel ...etc. Call me thick but I really can't get your point.

I never said they should attempt to copy TalkTalk, OneTel, etc and use CPS. Personally, I'd prefer the way it is as it ensures cheap calls at only 2p per call. I believe they couldn't keep the calls at only 2p per call if they used CPS. My post was basically to inform other forum members who may have wondered why they didn't use CPS same as TalkTalk, etc.

I don't know about you but I didn't realise there was a constant monthly fee involved in using CPS. I just thought that they (TalkTalk, etc) paid BT (I assumed a one-off fee) to make changes to their network so that my calls are routed via them from now on. Obviously, I'm wrong on this which is why I thought it was useful for other forum members as well.

Does this make sense?

pricefighter

bbb_uk wrote:

Does this make sense?

I found it useful info,and it makes sense to me.

MarkyMarkD

Very informative, thanks. But I also don't care that 18866 do not use CPS - I'm happy to dial the digits and happy to not do so, when it wouldn't be appropriate. CPS is more of a pain than a benefit IMHO.

April2

MarkyMarkD wrote:

Very informative, thanks. But I also don't care that 18866 do not use CPS - I'm happy to dial the digits and happy to not do so, when it wouldn't be appropriate. CPS is more of a pain than a benefit IMHO.

Having only free weekend calls with my current CPS provider and seeing a number of 'free weekend AND evening calls' offerings from other CPS providers, I decided this week to undertake what, in years now thankfully past, I'd have called a 'cost benefit analysis' - but which I now just refer to as a quick butchers to work out the saving!

Not an onerous task with 18866's online call logs - what was the average monthly cost of weekday* evening calls made on 18866 over the past 6 months and would saving that amount make it worth the hassle of changing?

* Actually, I just had to total all 1800-0600 calls and didn't have to work out which dates were weekdays because weekend evening calls went out on the CPS and so did not appear on the 18866 online call log.

Five minutes later and the answer was obvious - don't bother changing for the sake of a little over £1 a month.