PRSBT response to the Ofcom consultation on "Conditions regulating Premium Rate Services"

BT response to the Ofcom consultation on "Conditions regulating Premium Rate Services"

Issued December 22, 2005

Introduction

BT welcomes the chance to comment on this consultation and is pleased to see that Ofcom are taking a proactive step to tackle this new trend in dialler problems.

BT has been seeing complaints about diallers operating on unregulated numbers for some time, in particular 0871. As with the dialler situation on 09 numbers prior to the pre-registration regime, it is extremely difficult to recreate the conditions the user encounters. We remain suspicious, however, that unscrupulous companies are using other number ranges to circumvent regulation and are operating them in a way that would not be allowed under the registration rules. This is all the more worrying as many of the calls can fall below the threshold where the customer would notice anything untoward. Alternatively, they may not question call charges, because they often call these numbers for legitimate purposes.

There is, in our opinion, a huge potential underlying consumer detriment issue here with, possibly, thousands of customers being unaware of dialler use on their lines. In the case of 09 diallers the problem all but disappeared when the pre-registration requirement was implemented.

BT has included in this response some updated analysis on the 0871 dialler problem.

BT's specific comments are detailed in the relevant sections of this document.

Download response as PDF document

Comments should be addressed to Nicola Robbins at nicola.robbins@bt.com