Posted on: 4th March 2025, by Magrathea
Welcome to the March newsletter, combining news from Magrathea and around the industry.
What’s included
- Ofcom Statement: Revenue Sharing – Effective April 2025
- Ofcom Consultation: Review of the A2P SMS market
- ComReg: SMS Registry
- Service Spotlight: Broadband
- Service Spotlight: Irish Numbering & Porting
- SOGEA Integral Transfer Process (article link)
- Reminder: MAGIC Portal, recurring maintenance window
- Team Challenge: Thames Path Mighty Hike
- Industry events and updates
- What’s on our minds…
Ofcom Statement: Revenue Sharing – Effective April 2025
We flagged the statement back in our December news and an earlier article here summarising the consultation. With April rapidly approaching we wanted to share a quick reminder of the impact.
Numbers in the 01, 02, 03, 055, 056, 070 and 076 ranges must not be used to share revenue, directly or indirectly with the called or the calling party.
Numbers in the 084 and 087 ranges must never share revenue (directly or indirectly) with the calling party, except for ‘services in kind’ which is to enable conference calling and advice lines to operate as the often do today.
The key thing is that ‘cash for calls’ is banned on all of these number types so attempts to make calls purely to generate credit is considered a form of artificially generated traffic and is banned. For the full statement please click here.
Ofcom Consultation: Review of A2P SMS market
A2P SMS messages are generated from platforms rather than people and particularly since Covid have become a communication channel of choice by organisations to update and engage with their clients and end-users of services. Examples include messages from the NHS and one-time passcodes. Ofcom’s research has identified that this type of message is valued by end-users and whilst other platforms exist, SMS remains the primary trusted channel.
As a result, there are no real competitive options and market forces are not in play when it comes to pricing for this service, at least for now. Research suggests that prices have increased by up to 75% since 2021 and without intervention it is considered likely that wholesalers will continue to capitalise on this market.
Ofcom propose to introduce a price cap for all A2P SMS terminations directly to an Aggregator via a MCP (on-net) or indirectly via interconnect routes between MCPs (off-net). The proposed price cap of 1.96p is based on an average of December 2020 ‘on-net’ prices of 1.60p, adjusted by inflation to Sept 2024. Going forward the price will continue to be adjusted by inflation. This cap would come into place at least 3 months after Ofcom’s final decision and will be reviewed over a three-year period – 1/1/2026 to 31/12/2028.
The full consultation can be found here . The deadline for responses to Ofcom is the 8th April.
ComReg SMS Registry
A ComReg statement, which can be found here, outlines the roadmap for the currently under development SMS Sender Registry. This registry will be a secure repository of all registered SMS Sender IDs, registered Sender ID Owners (SIDOs) and registered electronic communications providers that transmit SMS messages bearing registered SMS Sender IDs.
The registry will be implemented in a phased basis to minimise impact on industry, organisations and consumers. A summary of each phase can be explored in the above link but the key phase commences in July with all SMS messages bearing an unregistered Sender ID being modified to indicate that the Sender ID is not registered. This transition phase will lead to the full operational phase in October when SMS messages will be blocked in that scenario.
Service Spotlight: Broadband
We know from experience that many of our clients need connectivity to enable them to provide a complete service to their customers, and want to keep it all ‘under one roof’. For that reason we have always provided WLR lines and now do the same with fibre and partial fibre broadband.
We are currently reselling BT Wholesale and All Points Fibre, which can be ordered quickly and easily via our MAGIC Portal. For the more complex installations we offer a managed service, which costs a little more but ensures that your order gets fully supported by one of our team through the ordering process.
If you would like to learn more about our Broadband offering and get access to our portal, please do not hesitate to get in touch with our team or download the user guide through our MAGIC Portal.
Service Spotlight: Irish Numbering & Porting
With St Patrick’s Day approaching and any excuse for a celebration around here, we are offering 50% off the set-up fee for emergency services on any Irish account during the month of March. Just mention this offer when you speak to our team!
In case you don’t know already, we would like to remind you that we provide a full range of Irish numbers, as well as the associated services such as porting and emergency call handling. With a node in Dublin we can also deliver locally originated traffic to local services – so if you have a requirement please reach out to our team.
Clients based in the EU can also opt to pay us in Euros if that’s simpler – both Sterling and Euro values will be displayed on your invoice.
For some insights into the latest regulatory and compliance matters around Irish numbering you can revisit our article on the topic here.
Article Link: SOGEA Integral Transfer Process
We are often hearing comments about how challenging it can be to extract a phone number as part of the migration process from WLR to a new fibre solution. However, there is a tried and tested method for splitting numbers from the underlying WLR line when a new SOGEA service is ordered – read here for details on what this means and how it works.
Reminder: MAGIC Portal, recurring maintenance window
Introduced last month, please be aware that we now have a recurring update window for the MAGIC Portal and the various tools contained within it. This provisionally takes place each Sunday morning between 10am and midday.
Of course, the slot won’t be used every week but when it is, a clear message will be displayed if you attempt to access the Portal during a maintenance window so you will know to try again later.
If you would like a reminder about what you can do via our MAGIC Portal, you can download our summary here.
Team Challenge: The Mighty Hike 2025
A few of our team tackled the Thames Path Mighty Hike in 2024, walking 13 miles to raise over £1000 for sum for Macmillan Cancer Support, something we are very proud of. However, this year we have set our sights a little higher!
A small team of us – The MagSteppers – will be tackling the full marathon distance! By July, when the Mighty Hike event takes place, we hope to have doubled our funds raised to reflect that we are covering twice the distance! Training is already underway and we will keep updating our Linked In feed with progress reports…if you would like to donate to this fabulous cause you can find our page here.
Industry events
Comms Council UK is hosting their inaugural Fraud Summit this week (5th March). This event is designed to bring together all the various stakeholders to find a way to better collaborate and in particular share knowledge to help reduce fraud. Our MD will be acting as host for the day and a few of our team will be in the audience and taking the opportunity to catch up with our industry colleagues and wider stakeholder groups.
The following week, on the 12th, we are one of the sponsors of Cavell Summit Europe at their tenth anniversary event. This one-day event is for people in our industry to gain knowledge and insights through keynotes, panels and of course the main networking opportunities. The Magrathea team will be there to meet with existing clients and hopefully some soon to be new clients – as well as our partners and suppliers who we always enjoy catching up with.
As the formal parts of the day wind down we will be sponsoring drinks at the event for a more casual catch-up to round off the day.
And then just a week later we are off again, this time to Channel Live at the NEC. Our team will be present on both the 19th and 20th as well as taking part in some panel discussions. CCUK also have a stand again this year so if you want to find out more about the trade association pop along to that. Otherwise if you would like to meet anyone about Magrathea business just let us know and we can set up a meeting in the dedicated space the event has lined up.
What’s on our minds…
March does seem to be full of events relating to fraud, so it’s no surprise it’s a topic on our minds here at Magrathea right now. Not that it ever stops really.
We put a lot of effort into our due diligence when onboarding and monitoring clients and are quick to respond to reports of concerns. We have been told by those who keep an eye on such things that we are doing all the right things…but, despite this, our name still gets tangled up in underhand dealings. It’s really rather depressing for our team who work so hard to do the right things and to look after our reputation.
As a percentage of numbers allocated we have a miniscule amount of complaints, which is reassuring, however those that do occur of course create a disproportionately large problem. The time, resource and reputational damage is often severe.
Some of these complaints are where a user (customer of our client, or even further down the chain normally) has slipped through by doing a really good job of presenting themselves as a legitimate user. Our work with the CCUK and other organisations to try and share information to keep tracking down these fraudsters and shutting them down faster is ongoing and I believe already having an impact.
However, the most difficult to tackle are the cases where our numbers are spoofed. This makes up a large proportion of the complaints we receive and we think they are the most damaging as there is absolutely nothing we can do to stop them. If the calls don’t touch our network we can’t block them or identify where they are coming from.
And this is why Magrathea are supporting all the work that is being done to look at ‘trace back’ solutions here in the UK. Only by being able to quickly and reliably trace calls back to their true origin can we really begin to stamp out fraudulent behaviour on our telecoms network.
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
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.