November 2026 – Newsletter

Posted on: 10th November 2026, by Magrathea

Welcome to the November edition of MagInsights, bringing together the latest news from Magrathea and developments from across the industry.

In this edition

• Magrathea at 25: Creating Our Future
• Ofcom fine for numbering misuse
• Ofcom launch a traceback trial
• Reminder: Christmas porting hours
• Reminder: WLR Shutdown
• Reminder: Is your Fraud Warning contact up to date?
• Service Spotlight: Wholesale Mobile
• Service Spotlight: Manage your accounts through MAGIC
• Service Spotlight: SIP Resilience
• Service Spotlight: SOADSL now available
• Events and outings
• Magrathea Musings

FEATURED ARTICLE

Magrathea at 25: Creating Our Future

Will we still need telephone numbers in ten years’ time? Our Managing Director, Tracey Wright, thinks we will, even if we use them less visibly. In the final article in our 25th anniversary series, she looks ahead at what she’d like to see change – from making number porting simpler to restoring trust in phone calls – and what Magrathea can do to help.

Read Tracey’s article here

INDUSTRY WATCH

Ofcom fine for numbering misuse

On the 21st October, Ofcom announced that a telecoms provider, Tismi, has been fined for “failing to take appropriate and proportionate steps to ensure allocated numbers were not misused, including to perpetrate scams”.

Once again this is a reminder that Ofcom have stepped up their efforts in respect of enforcement action relating to fraud or misuse. Ofcom highlighted three things that were lacking and they serve as a good reminder to us all:

• Appropriate due diligence (KYC checks) must be carried out when suballocating numbers
• Systems and processes to monitor and identify (and address) misuse must be in place
• You must have a formal documented process to handle reports of misuse

On the same day, Ofcom announced another investigation into a company who they believe may have failed to comply with their obligations relating to the use of telephone numbers and the rules around calling line identification.

If you would like to review your approach, we are always happy to talk through how KYC and Know Your Traffic (KYT) monitoring can help you better understand activity on your account and identify potential issues earlier and our general guidance is available for download in The Guide.

Ofcom launches a traceback trial

Call traceback is one of the key components needed to meet industry commitments under the 2025 Telecommunications Fraud Charter and the Government’s Fraud Strategy. Ofcom instructed NICC Standards Ltd to review the options earlier this year, with the NICC recommending improvements to the existing guidelines and detailing a range of alternative approaches.

After no doubt feeling the pressure of Home Office scrutiny, Ofcom have now published details of its call traceback trial , including how it will request information and what providers should do if they receive a request.

Magrathea have long supported a national traceback solution that could speed up the identification of the source of callers spoofing CLI, something anyone with large volumes of number ranges will have suffered from, so we welcome this move. We are concerned that the scheme is not ambitious enough with only the most serious or high-profile cases likely to be picked to traceback, however, it is a step in the right direction and the lessons that will be learned will help shape more advanced solutions to come in the future.

The key thing our clients should be aware of is that Ofcom will initially issue formal information request under section 135 of the Communications Act. Unlike the more routine requests they send out, these will be in final form with a short deadline, meaning you need to make sure you have a process in place to respond by the deadline given in the request.

Ofcom have stated that they want to use this trial to understand where this process is overly burdensome and to learn what else could be done to make it all work more smoothly. In the meantime, they have asked providers to get prepared by:

• Creating an internal process to handle requests
• Consider nominating an individual or dedicated mailbox for this purpose (and notify Ofcom)
• Consider how long you retain relevant data; can you preserve it for longer where needed

If you need any support when responding to a S135, please give our team a call, they will be happy to help if they can.

REMINDER

Christmas porting hours

This year, along with many others, we are shortening our porting desk closures. To support clients migrating numbers ahead of the WLR shutdown, our Porting Desk will be open on 21, 22, 23, 29 and 30 December to handle exports and automated imports. Please submit only ports affected by the WLR shutdown during this period.

We expect our main porting partners to be open on these dates, although their availability and capacity are not yet confirmed. Please avoid scheduling complex or sensitive ports, including those for blue light or essential services, during this period, as support may be limited if an issue arises.

Orders requiring manual intervention, including bulk uploads, will not be supported on these dates. Normal processing for complex, sensitive and manual orders will resume on 4 January 2027.

If you are unsure whether an order can be supported, please contact porting@magrathea-telecom.co.uk before submitting it.

REMINDER

WLR Shutdown

Magrathea will be terminating all remaining WLR lines on 1st December 2026. All impacted clients have been notified and fortunately there are very few services left to migrate.

If you have services elsewhere, please remember that the WLR shutdown deadline remains 31 January 2027. Openreach has introduced Emergency Voice and Access Continuity (EVAc) as a temporary safety measure for certain eligible lines that have not been migrated by the deadline, but it cannot be ordered in advance and should not be treated as an extension.

REMINDER

Is your fraud warning contact up to date?

If we detect potentially fraudulent activity on your account, we need to reach the right team quickly so we can work with you to investigate and resolve it. Please check that you have a Fraud Call-Pattern Warning email address listed in the Account Admin Portal (AAP) and that it’s a mailbox monitored by the team responsible for responding to fraud alerts. This helps both automated warnings and messages from our team reach the people who can act on them.

To check or update your contact, log in to MAGIC and select Account Admin. If you don’t have access or can’t edit the details, please email Client Support with the address you’d like us to use, and we’ll update it for you.

SERVICE SPOTLIGHT

Wholesale Mobile

We first mentioned this back in June when we had made a start on our mobile integration project. We are now delighted to report we are almost ready for commercial launch! We already have a few clients testing the service and intend to carry out a soft launch later this month.

We have collated a list of interested clients already, but if you think you would like to be part of our soft launch (which basically means triple checking everything before you sell it to your customer and being patient with us while we iron out any glitches that might arise!) please do let us know.

SERVICE SPOTLIGHT

Manage your accounts through MAGIC

Our Account Admin Portal (AAP), available through our MAGIC Portal, is a replacement for our original Client Portal. We will be contacting all clients using the old Portal and API and asking you to migrate across, but if you are keen to make the switch and get ahead of the list just get in touch and we will prioritise you.

For any client not already using the Client Portal or API you can jump straight into MAGIC. It makes day-to-day account management easier. You can check balances and recent calls, update contact email addresses, transfer funds, adjust tariff restrictions and manage SIP authentication settings. Different access levels let you control which functions each member of your team can use.

We will be shutting down the original Client Portal and API early next year, and with the closure of our WLR Portal, that means we will finally have everything our clients need in one MAGIC Portal!

SERVICE SPOTLIGHT

SIP Resilience

Providing a resilient service to end-users is essential, so we would like to remind clients that we offer a SIP Resilience service at no extra cost. This allows clients to nominate multiple IP addresses for our servers to monitor and send calls to, helping to maintain service continuity if an endpoint becomes unavailable.

If you would like more information, see the ‘Products’ section on Client Info, or details are in The Guide via the MAGIC Portal

SERVICE SPOTLIGHT

SOADSL Now Available

We’ve expanded our broadband portfolio to include SOADSL (Single Order ADSL), providing an additional connectivity option for locations where SOGEA and FTTP are not available.

SOADSL offers standalone broadband connectivity without the need for a traditional PSTN telephone service, making it a useful alternative for customers in areas where newer broadband technologies have yet to reach.

Events and outings

MAGRATHEA MUSINGS

It’s been an unusual month for the team having to say farewell to a couple of valued team members as they move on to new careers. Hayley and David were with us a long while and leave us for all the best reasons, we wish them both every success in their new roles.

But of course, the flip side is the great opportunity to bring on board new people or enable people to try new things, which is always exciting.

First of all, we are delighted to welcome Samantha to our team as a Junior Systems Administrator. Sam has graduated university with some great knowledge in cyber security, networking and troubleshooting and she is settling in as part of the team brilliantly. Her position here means that our previous graduate can progress further through the technical ranks.

Then we have Charlotte, who has worked here in our support team for 12 years, and is now stepping in to the role of Client Relationship Manager. Her excellent knowledge of all of our products and services combined with existing strong client relationships, meant this was the ideal step for Charlotte and we are delighted that she agreed to take it on.

And finally, we have found an excellent candidate to fill the gap in our senior tech team – but more on that when they join next month!

Meanwhile, everything else carries on as normal. We took part in the Wear it Pink fundraiser for Breast Cancer Now, with the team raising over £135 by making cakes and biscuits and playing silly games. We were thrilled to see so much effort put into the pink theme with wigs and outfits all coming out for the day!

Kind regards

The Magrathea Team

The information in this newsletter is provided for general information only and should not be relied upon as legal or professional advice. You should obtain independent professional advice where appropriate. Magrathea accepts no liability for any errors or omissions, or for any loss arising from reliance on this information.