Posted on: 4th June 2025, by Magrathea
Welcome to the June newsletter, combining news from Magrathea and around the industry.
What’s included
- Monitoring for fraudulent calling patterns
- Product Spotlight: MagSIPConnect
- Reminder: Local Caller ID restrictions
- Reminder: Tactical Erroneous Transfer Process
- Reminder: No recycling of ported numbers
- Reminder: Workshop on Number Portability – 12th June 2025
- Update: Client survey
- Update: AI statement
- Events and outings
- What’s on our minds…
Monitoring for fraudulent calling patterns – call for our industry to do more
Not for the first time, there are calls for industry to do more when the comms network is involved in fraud and scams. On the 14th May, a debate was held in the House of Lords discussing whether technology and telecoms companies should bear joint and direct financial responsibility for fraud prevention and victim reimbursement, in the same way that banks do.
Through our work with Comms Council UK (CCUK) we are setting up meeting with all those involved in the debate and are ensuring that the Lords have visibility of the telecoms sector’s significant investment in fraud prevention and ongoing collaborative work with Government bodies, law enforcement, and other partners.
The importance of a collective, industry-wide approach to tackling fraud was emphasised – a transcript of the debate can be found here and we will of course keep you updated on any matters that arise from this.
Meanwhile, Magrathea continue to apply significant resource in this area through enhanced KYC checks and constant automated and human monitoring of our network. We also have guidance available to clients via The Guide to support you when doing your own checks and monitoring.
In addition, CCUK has recently published a best practice guide to support members in tackling scams, fraud, and nuisance calls by monitoring for unusual or suspicious calling patterns. This guidance highlights the importance of understanding what normal call traffic looks like for your business and using that knowledge to spot high-risk patterns, such as appear through scam and predatory marketing calls.
If you are not currently a member of CCUK you should consider joining up for access to all of their guidance and support. Being part of a trade association also means you can add your voice to the many others who are campaigning and doing work in this important area. More information on how to become involved can be found here.
Product Spotlight: MagSIPConnect
This month sees the launch of an additional authentication method for calls. MagSIPConnect, which we’ve designed for clients using cloud communication tools and platforms enabling authentication for outbound calls based on a unique SIP header rather than the standard IPAuth or SIP Register methods.
We have added this function to meet client demand and it’s only the first phase. It already allows for multiple unique SIP headers with the option of sub accounts to separate traffic by customer.
You can read a bit more about MagSIPConnect in our recent article here and if you are interested in finding out more or require any specific features as part of this service, please do contact our team as there is an opportunity to influence the service development to align with your specific use case.
Reminder: Local Caller ID restrictions
India is the latest country to restrict internationally originated calls presenting a local CLI. These calls will usually be blocked, rejected or fail, or in some cases have a replacement “network number” added and the call passed as anonymous.
Please verify the sources of your Indian traffic and ensure that only genuine calls are routed via Magrathea. If you are unsure if this affects you, please contact support@magrathea-telecom.co.uk for assistance.
Reminder: Tactical Erroneous Transfer Process (TETP)
We mentioned this last month but as its key to a lot of our clients this is just a reminder that to benefit from this process CPs need to sign up to a register, please be aware that this is a reciprocal process. If you use our porting desk then your team should have received the necessary information to help them understand more. But please contact us if this is not the case and full details on the OTA2 website can be found here.
Important Reminder not to Recycle Ported Numbers
There is the occasional case of a problem occurring whereby a range is imported for an end user, but then subsequently reused by the CP for another end user once the original end user has terminated their service.
Re-using ported in numbers in this way is prohibited under the industry porting guidelines and so you should take care to ensure this doesn’t happen on numbers that you have ported in for an end user.
Once an end user has terminated service on their numbers, one of two things should happen. If part of a range is no longer in use, the unused numbers should be quarantined as they cannot be re-used. If it’s a complete range that is no longer in use, these should be returned to the range holder – we can arrange for this to happen if you email porting@magrathea-telecom.co.uk.
We perform regular audits of numbering to make sure that where ported numbers have been deactivated, they are returned to the range holder where possible but if you can flag these to us as well that is really helpful!
Reminder: Workshop on Number Portability – 12th June 2025 at 11:00
There is still time to book a place on this popular workshop. Whether you are new to porting or would just value a refresher we are offering clients an opportunity to attend a 45-minute online workshop with our porting expert Ashley Farr, without any cost. Please email support@magrathea-telecom.co.uk to reserve your space.
Update: Client survey
Thank you to all clients who have completed our survey. We will be looking at the results over the next few days in order to shape our plans for the next year. We will share highlights with you in the next newsletter and if you have left contact details then we will also follow up on any specific comments directly.
Although the survey is now closed to allow us to collate and analyse responses, the link will remain active a while longer in case any client wishes to take the opportunity to submit anonymous feedback. Of course, we always welcome feedback and requests from our clients all year round too, just give us a call or drop us an email.
Update: AI statement
Because we like to be as transparent as possible about how we do things we have recently included an AI statement on our website, explaining our current stance on using AI. Click here for more information.
In short, whilst we can see there is a lot of positive potential from AI, we are also aware of the concerns. As a true agnostic wholesaler, we develop and maintain our own network; this ensures we have control of when and how AI is used across the business, keeping security and resilience as paramount.
Events and Outings
Last month Tracey Wright and Lucy Elder-Bowles, our Network manager, attended a really enjoyable event, meeting others at the face to face CCUK Women in Telecoms Network Event, hosted by Vorboss and sponsored by us. It was a great chance to meet industry colleagues and catch up on news and views that are impacting the human side of our telecoms industry.
The remit of this group is widening as it learns more about the workplace challenges in attracting, retaining and rewarding staff in a very competitive environment. CCUK WiT is free to join and is open to anyone who has an interest in ensuring we have a diverse and supportive workforce, click here for more details.
On June 18th we are pleased to be in Dublin for the ComReg Conference at Croke Park, a fantastic venue. Hearing first hand the latest industry and regulatory thinking in Ireland ensures we understand the regulatory landscape in Ireland and Europe better and can support clients that have Irish operations in the same way as we do in the UK. So, we’re looking forward to hearing debates on the future of the European telecommunications landscape, including ComReg’s role in supporting the European Security Framework and NIS2s.
We don’t often get chance to be in Dublin so we are also looking forward to hosting a dinner the evening before for both clients and colleagues in the industry. We have reached out to our Ireland based friends but if you’re planning to be in Dublin on the evening of the 17th June and would like to join us, then please get in touch. We are a little restricted on numbers but we would like to make the most of this opportunity to meet up with our clients socially.
And finally, for this month, on the 26th June we have the CCUK Summer Forum and AGM. This is a really useful event for CCUK members to connect and a few of the Magrathea team will be there. This year it will include panel discussions on fraud and scams as well as apprenticeships and learning how they can help with attracting and retaining skilled people in our industry. It is kindly sponsored by Simwood, tickets are free to members and can be booked here.
What’s on our minds….
Following a glorious sunny spell here in the UK we have an extra spring in our step to get through our list of priorities before the end of our business year this month. Our most important project that we are pushing to complete is a revamp of our network monitoring tools. These have been worked on for a good few months now and are entering the final phase of dual running – although this means a bit of extra work for our team while they get double the alerts and warnings to check – it will be well worth it when our new system takes over. All of our tests so far show that the quality of monitoring and the additional intelligence that can be applied will result in less false alarms and more early warnings. Resulting in a better experience for both our clients and our team.
And of course, we mentioned before that a small team of us – The MagSteppers – are tackling the marathon distance Thames Mighty Hike event in July so training is well underway. This hike is to raise money for Macmillan Cancer Support so if you would like to donate to this fabulous cause and motivate the team to keep on training, you can find the page here.
As always here at Magrathea we appreciate your comments and feedback, if there is anything you would like to contact us about, please email info@magrathea-telecom.co.uk
Kind regards
Client Support, 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.