1890 numbers - why no landline alternative obligation?

AndrewJRenko

Dinarius wrote: »

Here's an even madder idea:

About 99.9% of what's posted on Boards.ie is people expressing views that could otherwise be made "...known to people who matter..." and, guess what, maybe some of them do both.

One of the main points of the likes of boards.ie is to air and debate arguments, in order to evaluate their validity, before taking them to the next level.

A bit less of the screamingly obvious might be more helpful to the debate.

D.

True, though in fairness, 99.9% of what's posted on Boards.ie don't have currently open public consultations with the relevant regulator. It is your one chance in a generation to have your voice heard. Take it or leave it.

BoatMad

AndrewJRenko wrote: »

True, though in fairness, 99.9% of what's posted on Boards.ie don't have currently open public consultations with the relevant regulator. It is your one chance in a generation to have your voice heard. Take it or leave it.

I made my submission , thanks for the pointers

Fred Swanson

This post has been deleted.

coylemj

Fred Swanson wrote: »

This post has been deleted.

+1 it's all about making money from routine customer calls but another aspect of it is that by making sure that the customer is paying by the minute, it keeps the call short and thus they can have a reduced number of call agents.

Fred Swanson wrote: »

This post has been deleted.

We've all had a chat at some stage with Ravi in Bangalore so I'm pretty sure most people know that simply ringing an (01) number doesn't guarantee that the person you end up speaking to is in Dublin.

Dinarius

UK Minister up before a parliamentary committee this morning regarding a similar situation there. People seeking some form of state aid being charged £0.55 per minute when phoning to enquire.

Uproar regarding the call charge.

Do they need to invite submissions from interested parties about the screamingly obvious? Of course not. Whatever we may think about them, the Brits do accountability better than we do.

A free phone number will be introduced for the service "by ministerial order", from next month.

I despair.

D.

L1011

Dinarius wrote: »

UK Minister up before a parliamentary committee this morning regarding a similar situation there. People seeking some form of state aid being charged £0.55 per minute when phoning to enquire.

Uproar regarding the call charge.

Do they need to invite submissions from interested parties about the screamingly obvious? Of course not. Whatever we may think about them, the Brits do accountability better than we do.

A free phone number will be introduced for the service "by ministerial order", from next month.

I despair.

D.

Unless you can identify an equivalent service here with an equivalent charge your specific comparison is baseless and pointless.

I suspect you aren't going to be able to.

Dinarius

L1011 wrote: »

Unless you can identify an equivalent service here with an equivalent charge your specific comparison is baseless and pointless.

I suspect you aren't going to be able to.

This has precisely zip to do with equivalence and everything to do with principle.

With respect, your reply is baseless and missing the point entirely.

D.

elperello

L1011 wrote: »

Unless you can identify an equivalent service here with an equivalent charge your specific comparison is baseless and pointless.

I suspect you aren't going to be able to.

You need to get out on the street.
Old,poor and vulnerable people are being cleaned out of credit by these numbers while the regulator sits on his hands.

Peregrinus

No, there is an equivalence isuse. As a matter of principle, people shouldn't be charged by the minute for accessing governments services to discuss their legal entitlements and obligations. No similar principle applies to accessing commercial organisations to talk about the goods and services that they sell or wish to sell to you. Business aren't obliged to sell or deal over the phone at all if they don't want to, and if they alienate customers or potential customers by not doing so, or by doing so only at exorbitant rates, the customers have the remedy in their own hands. If the practice is sufficiently objectionable to sufficiently many actual or potential customers, the businesses will abandon it. But citizens don't have the same option to vote with their feet when dealing with government agencies.

L1011

elperello wrote: »

You need to get out on the street.
Old,poor and vulnerable people are being cleaned out of credit by these numbers while the regulator sits on his hands.

The regulator are having a consultation process as they are required to do.

The 'example' given by Dinarius does not even involve the regulator; and is for a service that all equivalents in Ireland are geographical or 1800.

etselbbuns

L1011 wrote: »

Unless you can identify an equivalent service here with an equivalent charge your specific comparison is baseless and pointless.
I suspect you aren't going to be able to.

Well there are 076 numbers.
..usually charged at the same rate as if you were calling a national landline number…. but 076 Calls are Not Included in most provider’s Bundles
Calls to 076 cost 35cpm from mobiles

In 2011 a block of 200,000 “076” numbers were allocated to the public service.
SUSI, Insolvency Service of Ireland, HSE Dublin labs, CIC are 076 only for users.

L1011

etselbbuns wrote: »

Well there are 076 numbers.
..usually charged at the same rate as if you were calling a national landline number…. but 076 Calls are Not Included in most provider’s Bundles
Calls to 076 cost 35cpm from mobiles

In 2011 a block of 200,000 “076” numbers were allocated to the public service.
SUSI, Insolvency Service of Ireland, CIC are 076 only for users.

Which providers don't include these in bundles?

076 are usually considered local or cheaper than local as they are VOIP - not national rate.

Quick google finds one, unsourced page giving the 35c/minute for some operators but that isn't backed up by those operators actual charging lists; so its not a valid source.

etselbbuns

L1011 wrote: »

Which providers don't include these in bundles?

076 are usually considered local or cheaper than local as they are VOIP - not national rate.

Quick google finds one, unsourced page giving the 35c/minute for some operators but that isn't backed up by those operators actual charging lists; so its not a valid source.

Three, Vodafone, Eir, Tescomobile, IdMobile..

L1011

etselbbuns wrote: »

Three, Vodafone, Eir, Tescomobile, IdMobile..

Can you provide proof of this that isn't the 'moneyguideireland' page that is riddled with errors?

Dinarius

Peregrinus wrote: »

No, there is an equivalence isuse. As a matter of principle, people shouldn't be charged by the minute for accessing governments services to discuss their legal entitlements and obligations. No similar principle applies to accessing commercial organisations to talk about the goods and services that they sell or wish to sell to you. Business aren't obliged to sell or deal over the phone at all if they don't want to, and if they alienate customers or potential customers by not doing so, or by doing so only at exorbitant rates, the customers have the remedy in their own hands. If the practice is sufficiently objectionable to sufficiently many actual or potential customers, the businesses will abandon it. But citizens don't have the same option to vote with their feet when dealing with government agencies.

And citizens have the option to "vote with their feet" when, for example, being restricted to having to deal with two or three airlines in a given market, all using premium line numbers? Take your argument to its logical conclusion, and we're back to taking the car ferry.

Forget the cost of 1850/1890; I don't care if they charge €10/minute for using them, as long as they're obliged to provide a landline alternative. That does not, in my view, require submissions from interested parties. It's simply obvious. Couldn't a blanket regulation be introduced to that effect? I fail to see why not.

D.

L1011

Dinarius wrote: »

And citizens have the option to "vote with their feet" when, for example, being restricted to having to deal with two or three airlines in a given market, all using premium line numbers? Take your argument to its logical conclusion, and we're back to taking the car ferry.

Forget the cost of 1850/1890; I don't care if they charge €10/minute for using them, as long as they're obliged to provide a landline alternative. That does not, in my view, require submissions from interested parties. It's simply obvious. Couldn't a blanket regulation be introduced to that effect? I fail to see why not.

D.

Legally, it requires consultation. A blanket regulation can be introduced after consultation.

Have you made a submission to the consultation?

etselbbuns

L1011 wrote: »

Can you provide proof of this that isn't the 'moneyguideireland' page that is riddled with errors?

Tescomobile - 076 Numbers (Voice and IP Numbers):
Charged at the per minute rate appropriate to your price plan, for national calls to Irish landlines (does not avail of inclusive minutes).
Eir - voip numbers
IDmobile - 35c
etc

elperello

L1011 wrote: »

Legally, it requires consultation. A blanket regulation can be introduced after consultation.

Have you made a submission to the consultation?

Understand the process but my point was that these numbers have been used to rip off consumers for years.
Even if they are curtailed after consultation I for one will not be rushing to praise comreg.

L1011

etselbbuns wrote: »

Tescomobile - 076 Numbers (Voice and IP Numbers):
Charged at the per minute rate appropriate to your price plan, for national calls to Irish landlines (does not avail of inclusive minutes).
Eir - voip numbers
IDmobile - 35c
etc

Eir one does not say that they are not allowed from bundle, seeing as they're in a price list of what you get charged for going out of bundle (national calls being in their bundles) at that.

The other two are low-rent MVNOs. Does suggest regulation is required though.

guil

etselbbuns wrote: »

Three, Vodafone, Eir, Tescomobile, IdMobile..

I'm with Vodafone and on both bill pay and prepay I've never been charged for 076 calls.

amtc

Non geographic numbers were originally introduced to cope with 'bursty' traffic. Essentially they hand over higher up the network and so avoid local exchange transmission. It was also at a time when geographic numbers were timed and so cost more. Now most are bundled or untimed.

ComReg has to consult legally. There's also a separate numbering convention group which is owned by the industry...who get a nice cut off these numbers!

user1842

Fair play to the Revenue:

http://www.thejournal.ie/revenue-new-numbers-4256271-Sep2018/

I actually made a complaint to ComReg on this issue in 2015. Below is my complaint:

I wish to make a complaint on the designation of so-called LoCall numbers (numbers that cost the same a local call)

In the past telecom operators charged individually for local calls to fixed lines so the term LoCall made sense as the user reasonably expected that the call was cheap (same as a local call).

In modern times when the majority of telecom operators charge a bundled rate for all national fixed line calls (they do not charge per minute for national fixed line calls) the term LoCalll actually is totally miss-leading to the consumer and he/she will pay a lot more for the call depending on the length vs a similar local call.

The consumer rationally assumes that a LoCall number is cheap which is now not the case as it does not bear any current comparison to the cost of a local call (as local calls do not exist anymore).

I would suggest that Comreg remove the LoCall designation and instead define these type of calls as a premium rate service.

This is the response I got:

Thank you for your email.

I can understand the issue you have in this case but the way the Lo Call numbers work is that you are charged the same price as if you were paying for local number. These Lo Call number don’t come in under most package that the telecom providers provide.

Should you require any other information on ComReg, please let us know.

Yours Sincerely,

ohnonotgmail

Why are you so thrilled with that response? Unless i read it wrong it just says that they acknowledge that the problem exists.

user1842

ohnonotgmail wrote: »

Why are you so thrilled with that response? Unless i read it wrong it just says that they acknowledge that the problem exists.

Which response? I think the response ComReg gave is a joke. They did not even address my complaint and that was back in 2015.

Fair play to Revenue for changing their numbers to get around this nonsense.

ohnonotgmail

user1842 wrote: »

Which response? I think the response ComReg gave is a joke. They did not even address my complaint and that was back in 2015.

Fair play to Revenue for changing their numbers to get around this nonsense.

sorry, mixed up revenue and comreg. the response from comreg is a joke.

L1011

Comreg's contact centre is outsourced and does everything to avoid anything actually getting to Comreg itself. You need to be quite forceful to get actual Comreg staff involved. Even then their processes and policies are extremely poor.

user1842

It is sad as this is an easy fix and would bring ComReg some much needed good publicity for a change.

Unless they are fully aware of this nonsense and allow providers to use 1890 numbers as a money making technique.

Ten Pin

Someone from the CRU (was CER) was just on Sean O'Rourke's program giving a 1890 number for enquiries about saving by switching providers. Sean was on the ball and asked if that was a higher rate call and the person from CRU said it wasn't!!!

Granted it's not in the remit of CRU to control call charges but there is a certain irony in someone appearing on radio promoting energy cost savings while in the same breath unaware they're giving out a high rate contact number.

A sceptic could be forgiven for thinking that state departments are in no rush to eliminate 1890 charges. Telco's get the extra revenue and tax collector gets the VAT, all paid for by unsuspecting consumers.

Metroid diorteM

Who uses a landline any more? 1890 numbers need to be banned.

EdgeCase

1850 and 1890 are really legacies of a bygone era in terms of how they're charged. They were introduced when calls were quite expensive and they represented a way of ensuring people could call at what were then 'reasonable' rates.

They also allowed companies to have a single memorable number that wasn't based in one particular area and could route dynamically to various different call centres and so on, and did not change if they moved premises or changed their business around. There's still a business case for that use of them.

1850 was charged at 'one unit' the old local call rate i.e. untimed.
1890 was charged at a timed local call rate.

Neither of those two concepts exist anymore and people mostly make calls from mobiles and within unlimited or very large minute bundles. They don't pay on a per min basis and don't expect to be charged as such.

Then you'd 0818 introduced which was 'national rate' that was charged as a long-distance call, but then the market shifted and long-distance / local all became the same thing.

The 'bursty' traffic thing is actually 1850 71 xxxx, 1800 71 xxxx and 1890 71 xxxx. Those were designed for things like radio competition lines which used to congest local exchanges back in the days of less sophisticated technology. The exchanges only had so much switching capacity and if everyone suddenly started repeatedly dialling a very busy number, then other users wouldn't get a dial tone or would get 'bebebebebebe' for ages before calls connected.

What it meant was if the system was busy and you dialled 1850 71 .. at that point the exchange would dump the call to a rapid busy tone / announcement and your call would never actually be sent beyond the most local level, so it wouldn't even get sent to the network at all.

The days of radio phone-in competitions are largely over anyway with most of them now wanting you to contact them by text or even WhatsApp nowadays.

Again, largely a historical irrelevance these days.

The phone companies have clung to this ridiculous notion that there's something different about these non-geographic numbers. There is absolutely no reason for the excess charge other than they were able to get away with it.

1850, 1890 and 0818 should be treated as if they're geographical numbers and charged out of your bundled minutes, not treated as some kind of special time warp to 1992 Telecom Éireann rates.

The other stupidity with 1850 and 1890 is you cannot call them from outside of Ireland by prefixing with +353.

My view of it is just phase them out and use 0818 for everything and maybe make 1800 reachable via +353 1800 although that means (01) 800 xxxx is prevented from being used.

ComReg initiated a review of this months ago and I've heard nothing more.