Posted on: 5th December 2024, by Magrathea
Good afternoon and welcome to the December newsletter, combining news from Magrathea and around the industry – for the last time in 2024!
What’s included
- Preparing for January’s CLI changes – date announced!
- Protect your revenue over the holidays
- How to find useful information about your account
- Service Spotlight: Secure RTP
- Resilience and security guidance
- IP Migration/PSTN switch off
- Premium Rate services (PRS) – regulatory responsibility move to Ofcom
- International Fraud Awareness Week (article link)
- Events and outings
Preparing for January’s CLI changes
In preparation for the revised General Conditions coming into force in January 2025, we have now scheduled the enhanced CLI checks that will take place across our network to include presentation CLI. The date the change will take effect is Wednesday 15th January 2025. It is vital that you start preparing now for the introduction of the additional checks.
The updated rules require us to block any calls that originate from outside the UK but have a UK presentation CLI. There are some exceptions, such as when a customer is legitimately placing calls from abroad whilst representing a UK company and our existing exception tools will be expanded to manage these use cases.
If we have identified you as having a valid exception already, our team will have contacted you – please be sure to engage with their correspondence by return to avoid any unnecessary call blocking. If you have not already been contacted by our team but believe you have a valid case for sending calls from outside the UK presenting a UK CLI, please get in touch as a matter of urgency so we can ensure there is minimal disruption when the changes go live in our network.
Protect your revenue over the holidays
Public holidays can often be an invitation for criminals to target users and networks while they think things aren’t being monitored too closely. Although fraud is often quite sophisticated, taking advantage of advanced technology, we still see far too many cases of simple breaches due to equipment compromises.
This time of year is a good chance to remind yourself of some useful measures you can take to mitigate some of these types of fraud. You can access a useful document here.
Meanwhile, our Restricted Tariff options offer you the ability to limit the destinations that can be dialled through your outgoing calling account. We highly recommend making use of these options during the holiday period when your business customers are unlikely to be making international or premium calls.
These changes can be made via our Client Portal or RestAPI, if you are not already using one of these tools or you cannot see the new feature down the left hand side of your Client Portal home screen, please contact us on support@magrathea-telecom.co.uk and we can very quickly arrange for you to have access to these tools, or to adjust your level of access so that you can use this feature.
How to find useful information about your account
Clients with access to our MAGIC Portal can simply click on ‘The Guide’ and have access to all of our handbooks, product sheets and other useful information. Alternatively, you can visit our website for non-confidential information here.
Please check you have a copy of our SLA available with the emergency contact details should you need them over the Christmas period.
Service Spotlight: Secure RTP
Magrathea’s Secure RTP product allows for both the voice and signalling traffic associated with a telephone call to be protected from interception and monitoring through the use of TLS to protect the SIP signalling and SRTP to provide encryption of the audio RTP traffic.
The product is designed to give you greater peace of mind about the integrity of the calls being sent to your network.
For more information about our Secure RTP product please contact sales@magrathea-telecom.co.uk or give us a call on 0345 004 0040.
Resilience and Security Guidance
As you may recall from our October newsletter, we were reviewing the Ofcom guidance published here and had some concerns around their handling of ‘over the top’ voice solutions. We wrote to Ofcom and are delighted to have now received a response in which they acknowledge there was some confusion.
An update has been published to clarify their intention and although it still doesn’t cover everything we asked for, it does go some way to remove our fears that clients offering a PSTN replacement service would have to be in breach of the general conditions to do so!
We are now able to finish off our client guide and will publish it in The Guide this week.
IP Migration/PSTN switch off
Despite calls to better publicise what is happening with WLR and ISDN lines for many years now, we are finally starting to see more interest in alerting the public and business community. Last month DSIT published two lots of guidance, one relating to vulnerable customers here and one relating to local authorities here. They also published a new voluntary charter that the largest networks have signed up to in order to protect Critical National Infrastructure, you can read the details here.
Premium Rate services regulatory responsibility move to Ofcom
As you may be aware, the regulatory responsibility for Premium Rate services will formally pass from the Pre-Paid Services Authority (PSA) to Ofcom on the 1st February 2025.
Ofcom published a consultation in January 2024, where they introduced their draft PRS Order – which can be found in full here, however we have summarised what this could mean to our clients and the deadline for the registration scheme in more detail on our website here.
International Fraud Awareness Week
Running from 17th November to 23rd November, there were events and initiatives around the world to highlight the problem with scams and fraud. You can read our thoughts on the week here.
Events and outings
November was a very full month for industry engagement. As well as the NICC Open Forum where we learned about all the latest standards reviews happening, we had a lovely evening at the ISPA Awards, where we sponsored the Best Voice Provider award.
We also took part in a CCUK webinar to launch a new information sharing scheme to help combat fraud and scams plus Tracey Wright joined a panel for FCS to discuss the upcoming DSIT Strategic Priorities.
December will see us attending the CCUK Christmas Lunch, followed by the infamous ‘Tref Bash’, both on the 12th. There are still a few tickets remaining for the CCUK lunch if you would like to go along!
What’s on our minds…
With the festive season rapidly approaching, and our half year point, we always find ourselves extra busy tying up any loose ends and getting ready for our network freeze which takes effect on the 13th this year.
After that any changes to the network will be restricted to emergencies or essential works only. We are also restricting new porting orders from the 20th through until the New Year.
Along with most other large networks, we find this network freeze essential not only to ensure stability as far as possible for our clients but also to give our team a bit of a breather. We will be here working throughout but, in the lead up to and for the week after Christmas, we will be attempting to cover essential work only so we can run on a smaller team.
Please watch our social media too as we will no doubt be sharing Christmas Jumper Day pictures and highlights of the various events we attend this month.
As always, we would love to hear from you and understand what topics you would like us to cover and what information you would like to see in our newsletter. If you have any feedback or specific areas you feel we should cover in more detail – please email us info@magrathea-telecom.co.uk .
Finally, the whole team here would like to take this opportunity to send our best wishes for the festive season, and a healthy and happy New Year.
Kind regards
Client Focus Team, Magrathea
The information contained in this guidance is for your information only and is not intended to be relied on. It does not constitute legal professional advice, nor is it a substitute for you obtaining your own legal professional advice. Magrathea accepts no liability whatsoever for any errors, omissions or statements in this guidance or for any loss which may arise from your use of this guidance.