Posted on: 4th April 2024, by Magrathea
Welcome to the April newsletter, combining news from Magrathea and around the industry.
Gaining Provider Led Switching & Porting / One Touch Switch (OTS)
We now have a new ‘go live’ date for OTS – 12th September 2024. We are putting together some simple guidance for our clients to help you understand your obligations and next steps.
We will also be sending out a survey soon in which you can give us feedback and help us plan how we can best assist you in meeting the requirements.
Meanwhile, for the latest updates on OTS for residential users, visit the TOTSCO website here https://totsco.org.uk
Emergency Services Calls
If you do not already have access to 999/112 via Magrathea, we can offer a fully reliable service that has been extensively tested by the BT Emergency Handling Authority (EHA). Once you are signed up for this service, name and address data can be submitted via our API’s and 999/112 calls passed via your outbound account will be sent through to the EHA.
If you would like more information on this service, please get in touch.
Surcharging calls to the UK and Ireland
Although surcharging has been in place for a good while now, we still often get asked about it so here is a little recap of who and how it impacts.
- This applies to outbound calls only (i.e. any call you place via your Magrathea SIP or IAX account).
- If you only ever send your calls with a valid UK network CLI then you don’t need to worry about this, those calls are unaffected.
- If you send calls to us with an international network CLI, from a country that appears in the surcharge list, then you will be surcharged as per our rate sheet.
- If you operate your account with us on a restricted tariff your account will not allow calls to proceed that would result in a surcharge.
Clients can choose to block all calls where a surcharge would apply, block calls where a surcharge of more than 5p per minute would apply or allow all calls. By default your account will be set to block calls where a surcharge of more than 5ppm would apply so please let us know if you would like one of the other options.
For more details please download our guide here https://www.magrathea-telecom.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/Guidance-for-UK-and-Ireland-Surcharging-September-22-1.pdf
Downloadable reports
Most clients take advantage of our encrypted CDR downloads but not everyone is aware that they can also access a list of all numbers allocated to their account too. This file will help you see which numbers are ported and which have had emergency location data added too.
This file isn’t added to your downloads by default however, so if you don’t already have access just email us and we can set this up for you.
Connected North – 22nd & 23rd April
Tracey is once again moderating a panel session on behalf of CCUK and the Women in Telecoms group. She will be joined by representatives from Gamma, Ofcom, RPS and Calix and this should prove to be another interesting and inspiring discussion around attracting and retaining more women into the communications industry.
This is our first time visiting Connected North and we have some free tickets available so if to would like to go along please do get in touch and we will allocate tickets on a first come/first served basis.
What’s on our minds…
Just over a week ago we welcomed another news starter! Ralph Gladstone joins us in our support team. Ralph came to us after completing an apprenticeship with a fibre provider, where he learned some excellent customer service skills and of course plenty of industry acronyms so he hits the ground running for us.
As well as helping Ralph to settle in our support team are busy reaching out to a number of clients to update our due diligence records. We mentioned last month that we are reviewing and checking that we are doing all that we can to be compliant with Ofcom’s best practice and, despite us feeling confident about our existing process, we have been able to include a couple of improvements so clients may notice a few extra questions when you are contacted for your routine review. We really appreciate your patience and are happy to share our process and checklist for you to use on your customers if you would find it useful.
As always here at Magrathea we appreciate your comments and feedback, if there is anything you would like to contact us about, or you would like to opt out of receiving future newsletters, please email info@magrathea-telecom.co.uk
Kind regards
Magrathea