Why 18866 & 1899 Don't Offer CPS Facility?

MarkyMarkD

We actually have talktalk on CPS, because all of the family are also on talktalk. The "free calls to other talktalk customers" is worth far more to us than "free weekend and evening" calls would be - we never call anyone else anyway.

Our average 18866 bill is about 20p a month.

Our average talktalk bill is about 0p per month.

So we're not going to mess around trying out any other services.

Oh and btw the Mrs has 100 free minutes on her mobile per month which she NEVER uses up - so if we do make any calls from the house to non-family we can use the mobile instead of 18866 if we can be bothered.

bunking_off

The numbers quoted are correct, but don't really reveal the full issue of why companies such as 18866 prefer to use IDA (InDirect Access) rather than CPS (Carrier PreSelection).

With IDA, once they launched the service in the first place, 18866 need limited contact with BT, relating only to keeping the size of the pipe between the networks. In reality, many operators (e.g. OneTel) actually outsource this activity to 3rd party networks that act as aggregators. When an individual customer opts to go with 18866, the only configuration involved is for their billing system, and for their network to recognise the CLI of the customer. That's not only cheap, it's quick and will be an automated flowthrough from the website.

Contrast this with CPS. In this situation, whenever a customer chooses to use 18866, they have to communicate with BT to get BT to send calls to that particular customer to their network. The first thing is that although this is automated, it inserts a delay between the customer wanting the service and actually receiving it. The second thing is that BT are sticklers for all the ordering info being correct, and a proportion of the orders therefore fail : for an outfit like 18866 with no call centre and "streamlined" customer services, that's a nightmare. Then we come to the cost. Yes, there's the per line setup fee and the cost of hooking into BT's provisioning system in the context of fees paid to BT. However, on top of that, you have to design/build an IT system on your side of the fence that will interface with BT's. Whereas networks and billing systems are reasonably off-the-shelf, a provisioning system that will hook into BT's is a bespoke item hence not cheap...certainly it'd dwarf the annual fees being referred to earlier in the thread.

18866 have clearly taken the business decision that the advantage of going down the CPS path (less leakage of calls where the 18866 is omitted) isn't outweighed by the system costs.

bbb_uk

Bunking_Off, do you have a rough idea of how much it costs for using IDA only (ie how much continuing costs the likes of Call18866 may pay)?

An approx idea will do so I can compare (only for my own benefit I suppose) just how much cheaper IDA only options are instead of CPS options.

bunking_off

Ongoing....not much at all.

Terminology first - an E1 port is 30 voice channels. How many calls this can carry varies according to how big the route is, ie a 10xE1 route can carry considerably more than 10 times that which a 1xE1 route can (do a google on "Erlang theory" for the background for this). However, as a rule of thumb a well dimensioned E1 can carry say 20 - 25 busy hour voice calls.

To set up an IDA service you first have to get the access code enabled on BT's network. I'm not sure if this is a charged for item nowadays or absorbed into ppm charging, but when these things were charged it was approx £40k one off.

You then have setup fees for the ports. This is typically £750/E1, but this presupposes that you've got transmission availability at the BT site in question. In general you won't, so would have to build your own, buy transmission capacity from BT or buy from a third party network : the cost of this dwarves the £750 and there isn't a fixed guideline I could give on that. This brings about a build/buy decision - ultimately you could run a service with only one connection to BT, but if you did so you'd pay "Double Tandem" ppm charges to BT (see below). At the other extreme, you could connect to all 750 odd of BT's local switches and pay far lower ppm....but very, very, very few providers (if any at all) to this. On top of this, each E1 port is charged at £63/yr.

These costs are small, however, compared to the ongoing pence per minute costs. A typical IDA or CPS call will originate and terminate on BT customer lines. This means the provider has to pay BT to originate and terminate the call. This is currently done on a pence per minute basis. I haven't got my work computer handy to check the current figures (they're a matter of record as it's a standard industry agreement)...I have it at the back of my mind that the average rate is approx 0.25ppm for "DLE rate", 0.35ppm for "single tandem", and approx 0.45ppm for "double tandem" - a call originating & terminating on BT network would incur these charges twice. These are average though, and the actual is far higher for daytime, lower at evening/weekend. I'll post the de-averaged figures when I have them handy (prob Tuesday).

To add a sense of perspective, the ppm fees will typically amount to perhaps 500 times the port fees.

However, for you purposes, I think you're trying to contrast the costs of IDA with CPS. All of the above costs apply to both IDA and CPS. However, whereas with CPS the provider is paying BT on a per customer basis as has been discussed earlies in the thread, for IDA the provider doesn't pay anything to BT on a per customer basis.

bbb_uk

bunking_off wrote:

....A typical IDA or CPS call will originate and terminate on BT customer lines. This means the provider has to pay BT to originate and terminate the call. This is currently done on a pence per minute basis....

Thanks for that.

It's got me thinking now how can Call18866 only charge 2p per call if they have to pay BT (even if it is relatively small) ppm charge to originate and terminate the call from/to BT's network?

If I got my calculations corrent then even calling someone on a landline for only 5mins or so would put Call18866 at a loss. This is based on the 0.25ppm originate & 0.25ppm for terminating. That's 0.5ppm then times that by call length (eg 4mins) would equal that Call18866 would have to pay BT 2p.

Thanks again though!

bunking_off

bbb_uk wrote:

It's got me thinking now how can Call18866 only charge 2p per call if they have to pay BT (even if it is relatively small) ppm charge to originate and terminate the call from/to BT's network?

You & me both...

Powered up the work PC - you're honoured. The de-averaged termination rates are

daytime : 0.25/0.35/0.77 ppm
evening : 0.12/0.16/0.35 ppm
weekend : 0.09/0.12/0.28 ppm
(DLE rate [ie delivered direct to the relevant exchange] / single tandem / double tandem : typically an operator will pay a mix of DLE and ST depending on where the call comes from/goes to)

Origination rates are actually approx 5% higher.

When they were charging 1p flat, they clearly could not have been making a profit in the daytime, since depending on their connectivity, they'd have been paying 0.7ppm out to BT. If the call was 1 minute length, it'd leave 0.3p for them to carry the call - not enough. If the call was 2 minutes, do the maths, they're paying BT out 0.4p more than they receive, without factoring in the cost of actually carrying the call.

Perhaps at 2p flat, things may be better - though to be honest I still can't see that they can be possibly making a profit given average call lengths are 3 minutes. That might clarify why any argument that "well 18866 can do it so why can't XXX?" (for XXX insert your own choice of provider) - the simple answer is that XXX is probably wishing to make a profit.

Of course, 18866 may do the geo calls as a loss leader. After all, Onetel give weekend calls away when clearly from the above they'll be paying out approx 0.2ppm to BT. What I can't fathom with 18866, though, is where the offsetting profitable calls are. Still, not my problem - if they wish to offer a service at below cost, I'll continue to avail myself of it!

bbb_uk

bunking_off wrote:

What I can't fathom with 18866, though, is where the offsetting profitable calls are. Still, not my problem - if they wish to offer a service at below cost, I'll continue to avail myself of it!

I agree with you.

Some calls made via Ca18866 are routed overseas so I hear (on this forum) so does the termination charge to BT still have to be paid if the call came from overseas? I'm assuming it does though!

bunking_off

Ultimately the BT termination rate will have to be paid somehow....so if a third part UK carrier offers to terminate inbound calls from overseas (eg those looped out from the UK), then they in turn must be making a loss....