Posted on: 20th November 2019, by Magrathea
Welcome to the latest edition of the Magrathea Newsletter, combining news from Magrathea and around the industry.
Mag-Net
One of our traditional products that will be familiar to many clients – Chargeable Number Translation Service – has evolved over the years to suit our evolving sector and to meet specific client demands. However, the most significant development of this product to take place in recent times is perhaps worth sharing with you all now, while we see a seismic shift to ‘all IP’ solutions and many Communication Providers are moving away from traditional telephony solutions.
Mag-Net is the name of our enhanced Chargeable NTS product. Mag-Net gives you the ability to control the behaviour of incoming calls real-time, using only HTTPS commands. Utilising this greater level of interoperability with our network, this tool is ideally suited to any Communication Provider who wishes to have full control over call processing without the overhead of telephony switching equipment or in-house telecoms specialists.
Once a number is assigned to Mag-Net this allows complex call control systems to be designed your side, without needing anything more advanced than a webserver and a basic scripting language like PHP. As well as allowing you to instantly request routing changes, respond to live key presses or play messages, Mag-Net also tells you when calls begin and end so you can create your own call records and statistics.
IP Interconnection
We will not be alone in constantly reviewing our core network in preparation for the changes to an ‘all IP world’ that we anticipate over the coming years. With many years’ experience in supporting IP interconnects alongside our TDM solutions we see this is the prime time to expand our bilateral arrangements and exchange traffic with other networks directly.
If you would like to discuss establishing an IP interconnect to send and receive traffic from our network, please do get in touch with us. It is a great opportunity to reduce transit charges for both sides as well as to reduce points of failure.
If either of these services is of interest please contact support@magrathea-telecom.co.uk or speak to one of the team.
A reminder about our Restricted Tariff options
Our Restricted Tariff options offer you the ability to limit the destinations that can be dialled through your outgoing calling account. Previously, one of our support team would need to have updated your account to take advantage of one of these Restricted Tariffs, but this facility is now available in our RestAPI and Client Portal.
There are two options to limit the destinations you can dial by pence per minute on both the standard and gold route plans – you can choose either 3p per minute or 15p per minute as a restriction.
If you are not already using our Client Portal or RestAPI, 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.
Emergency Services – Ireland
As a further enhancement to our International offering, we can now offer access to the Emergency Services in the Republic of Ireland, with addresses submitted via our fully tested and reliable NTS and REST APIs.
Please contact our sales team on sales@magrathea-telecom.co.uk for more information on getting this service set up on your account.
Gold numbers
Gold numbers are available within all our number ranges. Memorable numbers or attractive repeating digit patterns will enable your customer to maximise their sales opportunities and will provide an excellent return on investment when used in advertising.
Help your customers get prepared for events, launches and promotions running next year with a number ending with 2020! We are offering 20% off list value for all numbers ending 2020 up till 31st December 2020.
Please contact sales@magrathea-telecom.co.uk to check availability and for a quote.
Co-location space
We currently have some space available for colocation in our suite in Telehouse East, with prices starting from £340 per month for a quarter rack.
The London Telehouse East Datacentre is among the most advanced, reliable and secure IT and Communications facilities in the world, with environmental control, high availability, power redundancy up to 2N+1, fire detection and suppression and multi-layer physical security systems.
If you would like to talk about colocation, please contact our sales team on sales@magrathea-telecom.co.uk
ITSPA Awards – time to get your nominations in!
Registration is now open for the 2020 ITSPA awards. These awards have become a focal point in the industry calendar and are a great opportunity to showcase all that we have to celebrate in our dynamic and innovative industry.
The 2020 ITSPA awards will be taking place on Thursday 30th April at Sea Containers – a prestigious venue in central London.
Magrathea are very pleased to be sponsoring the awards again and encourage as many of you as possible to get involved in the nomination process. All of the categories and information on how to enter can be found here: https://www.itspa.org.uk/itspa-awards/ with registration open until 31st December 2019.
Good luck to those of our customers who are entering!
A reminder about Personal Numbering changes – 070
Following the Ofcom consultation on 070 (Personal) number use and charges, the most significant change was the introduction of pricing rules at a wholesale level. The new price point created for 070 numbers is known as UK pn99 Personal.
Calls to these numbers via our service are now charged at £0.0069 PPM at all times, on all tariffs.
We will only allow calls to be made to 070 numbers that have been reclassified as UK pn99 Personal. Calls to any 070 number range that has not be reclassified to the new charge band will not connect.
Blockchain solution for Number Porting
Tracey, one of our Directors, represents ITSPA on the Ofcom Blockchain Governance Board and we are excited to have had the benefit of being the first to test the web interface to this much talked about potential solution. Our team, along with other members of the board and NICC working group members, will be testing the functionality and process and providing feedback on this very early stage of the project.
Ofcom’s plan is, after the initial test and feedback phase, to release the web interface to a wider audience to gather feedback. Meanwhile Magrathea, along with a few other operators, will be testing the process of setting up Blockchain nodes and helping to analyse feasibility and costs of this potential solution to number porting and number management.
Information, Connection or Signposting Services (ICSS)
Information, Connection or Signpost Services are run on premium rate numbers and provide the caller with the option to be connected onto a business, or provide information or advice about businesses and services.
The Phone-paid Services Authority have recently updated the Special Conditions for operating these numbers. They want to protect consumers from dialling a high rated phone number operating as an ICSS, believing that they are calling the end organisation they are seeking directly.
The updated Special Conditions will come in to force on 20 December 2019. Review the statement, responses and Special Conditions here:
ComReg consultation
ComReg have announced that from 1st December 2019, the consumer’s cost of calls to Irish non-geographic numbers (076, 1850, 1890 and 0818) must match geographic rates. This is the first step in removing three of the ranges by January 2022, after which time only 0818 and 0800s will be available.
As with all these significant changes there is considerable work to do to help our clients migrate their users to alternative ranges as seamlessly as possible and where the revenue available is vastly reduced this can be a difficult process to navigate.
In this instance ComReg are not enforcing a shift in wholesale termination rates on two of the ranges and it’s clear to see that the reason for that is to create an incentive for the networks to migrate services sooner rather than later! However, the 076 and 0818 termination rates will definitely be changed on 1st December 2019.
Finally, and most importantly from a day to day business point of view, ComReg have confirmed that they will no longer release ranges of 0800 and 0818 numbers to networks like us, instead they will be allocated on a number by number basis (which we can administer to our clients via a portal).
With all of this in mind Magrathea will be working closely with all clients who are impacted by these changes to try to find the best solutions going forward.
New London codes – (020) 4
Ofcom have recently announced the launch of the (020) 4 area code to help cope with increasing demand for numbering in the capital. These numbers will be used alongside existing (020) 3, 7 and 8 numbers across the whole of the London area.
If the launch of (020) 3 is anything to go by, the launch of (020) 4 may meet some consumer resistance in terms of knowledge around what is the area code for London. Now seems like a good time to remind customers that the code for London is 020 with (020) 7 and (020) 8 no longer having the geographic significance of Inner and Greater London that it used to 20 years ago. (020) 3, (020) 4, (020) 7 and (020) 8 are all equally valid London area codes.
(020) 4 numbers should be available to allocate via our APIs in January but we will publish a note when these ‘go live’.
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