Posted on: 10th January 2023, by Magrathea
Welcome to the latest edition of the Magrathea Newsletter, combining news from Magrathea and around the industry. We wish you all a very Happy New Year.
TOTSCo – updates
The One Touch Switching Company Ltd (TOTSCo) has been engaging with stakeholders as the industry navigates this new path to delivering one-touch switching for residential customers. The change concerns a Service Level Agreement (SLA) for the dispatch of switching information to the Switching Customer and anyone who has an interest in this space is invited to respond to the consultation here: https://totsco.org.uk/switching-information-sla/ by Friday 13th January 2023.
Also, we are pleased to see that process design and a developers guide have been published on the TOTSCo website (https://totsco.org.uk/news/). Please refer to their website to keep up to date with the news on this new solution that will be mandatory for any provide of IAS or NBICS services to residential consumers from April 2023.
Please also remember that business providers are required to offer a full ‘gaining party led’ process from April too, we hope to share output from the various working groups focussed on this in the coming weeks.
General Conditions on CLI Data
Ofcom have announced changes to the General Conditions and supporting guidance to improve the accuracy of the CLI data. Rules will be modified to require providers to identify and block calls with CLI data that is invalid, does not uniquely identify the caller, or does not contain a number that is dialable. Furthermore, guidance will be changed to require providers to:
- clarify that the format of a CLI should be a 10- or 11-digit number
- make use of information that identifies numbers which should not be used as CLI
- identify calls originating abroad that do not have valid CLI and block them
- identify and block calls from abroad spoofing UK CLI
- prohibit the use of 09 non-geographic numbers as CLI
These changes will come into force on 15th March 2023 and this link may be of interest https://www.magrathea-telecom.co.uk/ofcom-statement-on-reducing-scam-calls-and-texts-magrathea-summary-part-two/
Ofcom – removal of Universal Service Obligation to provide fax services
The obligation under the Universal Service Obligation to provide fax services has now been removed, they will be releasing a statement on how this should be implemented early this year. More information can be found here: https://www.ofcom.org.uk/consultations-and-statements/category-3/removing-fax-bt-and-kcom.
Ofcom – due diligence and good practice
Ofcom have recently released a statement titled Good practice guide to help prevent misuse of sub-allocated and assigned numbers which can be viewed in full here: https://www.ofcom.org.uk/consultations-and-statements/category-2/good-practice-guide-on-sub-allocated-assigned-numbers. The statement includes detailed best practice guidance for onboarding, monitoring and for dealing with incidents of misuse. This is to help providers meet their regulatory obligations in the General Conditions. If you have not already, please do take the time to read this statement in full and make sure that you are incorporating the due diligence guidelines into your business practices for new and existing clients.
We have written an article that may be of interest please do take a look at https://www.magrathea-telecom.co.uk/ofcom-statement-on-reducing-scam-calls-and-texts-magrathea-summary-part-one/
CLI on calls to Ireland
Comreg, the Irish regulator, have recently announced that they will no longer permit a local or national CLI to be passed on internationally originated calls to Ireland – in line with what we are seeing in many other countries. These changes come into force in May this year. As Magrathea have an node within Ireland we will be offering solutions for clients with calls legitimately originating with Irish CLIs, more details will be released shortly.
CLI on calls to Germany
As a reminder following our notice in November, the Germany regulatory body will no longer permit a local or national CLI to be passed on internationally originated calls to Germany. These calls may be blocked, rejected, fail or have a replacement “network number” added and the call passed as anonymous. If you experience unexpected call failures to Germany or other destinations that you know are valid, please do check to see if this circumstance could be the case. Unfortunately, as this is has been brought in as an anti-spam measure in place from the far end, there is typically no way to route around this but if you are in any doubt please send over the call examples and we can investigate.
Encrypted CDR migration
We are currently moving clients over from the old CDR server and from the old CDR format, to the new encrypted CDR server and the new CDR format – this new format has additional columns including more information that clients have requested to see in their daily reports as well as being a much more secure mechanism for collection. We are contacting each of our clients in turn, if we have not already spoken to you about this please do let us know if you need any help or have any concerns and we will be happy to assist, drop us an email on support@magrathea-telecom.co.uk
Splitting Number ranges
A reminder that both Magrathea number ranges and ported number ranges cannot be split and deactivated separately. We have seen an increase of numbers in blocks being re-assigned to other customers which then makes the whole block unportable. When porting ranges you can request to cease numbers if the range holder of the number is happy to split the range but you are unable to split a range once it is ported in. If you have any further questions please don’t hesitate to get in touch with the porting team on porting@magrathea-telecom.co.uk
Magrathea Team News
We are pleased to welcome Vahed Safizadeh to our Development team this month. Vahed has a great deal of experience in this area and has huge amounts of experience in dealing with databases. Vahed has already made a real impact on the team and has started work developing exciting applications – we are very fortunate to have him on board!
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