Magrathea Newsletter 19th March 2019

Posted on: 19th March 2019, by Magrathea

Welcome to the latest edition of the Magrathea Newsletter, combining news from Magrathea and around the industry.

 

The ‘old’ account status page

Last year we launched our Client Portal and RestAPI – these tools allow clients to manage their accounts, access information on our services and make simple changes to accounts – including balance checks and funds transfers between accounts.

 

As a reminder, we will be withdrawing our www.magrathea-telecom.co.uk/status at the end of April.

 

If you are not already using our RestAPI or Client Portal to check your account balances, please contact us on support@magrathea-telecom.co.uk and we can very quickly arrange for you to have access to these tools.

 

Secure RTP

We are pleased to release our Secure RTP product. This 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.

 

If you are interested in testing and using this product for your calls, please contact support@magrathea-telecom.co.uk

 

03 Number Availability

03 numbers seem to be increasing in popularity as customer confidence grows in dialling them – we are seeing a steady migration of 084 and 087 users taking up their 03 equivalent and an increase in the volume of standalone 03s being allocated too.

 

If you would like to take advantage of the shift towards 03 use we do have a selection of ranges available. There is no monthly charge for these and they are now available to all our numbering clients via the Numbering API, regardless of what numbering package you take from us.

 

To view the ranges available please see our downloads page here: https://mdh-dev-web-01.magrathea.net/wp-content/uploads/NON-GEO-NUMBERING-PLAN-1.pdf .

 

If you have any questions about this number type our Support team will be very happy to help – please email support@magrathea-telecom.co.uk.

 

CLI on calls

Following the updates to the Ofcom General Conditions last October, please take a few minutes to remind yourselves of your obligations around presentation and network CLIs and the importance of passing CLIs on all calls.

 

Our guidance document relating to Caller Line Identity can be downloaded from here:

 

https://www.magrathea-telecom.co.uk/assets/Client-Downloads/Guidance-on-network-and-presentation-numbers.pdf

 

Digest authentication with IP screening on SIP

For SIP originated calls, we historically have offered two separate secure ways for your traffic to be authenticated. Registration via username and password, or alternatively from a pre authorised IP address.

 

We are pleased to offer a new dual authentication solution which combines both ways, to increase security and also give you more choice as to how to configure your side.

 

Your username and password registration can have an IP mask applied to it, so that our servers recognise which account you are using but only allowing traffic using that username if the IP address is one that has been pre-registered.

 

As well as offering an additional layer of security, it will also mean that you can use the same IP for authentication on two different accounts which we could not previously offer – for example when using a standard account and a gold account simultaneously.

 

There is no charge to use this and if you would like to use it on your accounts, please contact support@magrathea-telecom.co.uk.

 

SLA documentation

We have made a minor clarification in our SLA Documentation around how to report different categories of faults out of hours. Our new documentation can be downloaded from here: https://mdh-dev-web-01.magrathea.net/wp-content/uploads/Service-Level-Agreement-4.pdf

 

What hasn’t changed is our commitment to providing excellent customer service and fault management around the clock!

 

The ITSPA Vision for Number Portability

ITSPA is heavily involved in Ofcom’s ongoing work to test a potential blockchain solution for number portability and has recently published a consultation which has been distributed to ITSPA members for their feedback. If you are an ITSPA member, please do take the time to respond to this. This is our opportunity to constructively assist with future improvements which will have a positive impact on our industry.

 

IP Migration

Another of the industry initiatives we are focusing on is the discussion around migration to an all IP infrastructure.  Following the Openreach announcement that they intend to shut down PSTN services by 2025 other major providers are working on similar timelines and this puts pressure on us to prepare wholesale solutions ready to support full IP products and services, with a particular focus on maintaining a competitive environment to ensure consumers choice and innovation are not left behind in the push for ‘all IP’ connectivity.

 

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