lhrowrker wrote on Jan 18^th, 2006 at 8:08pm:


Write to your MP using www.writetothem.com and ask them to sign the Parliamentary motion opposing the use of 0870 numbers.

51 MPs have now signed this motion.  See http://edmi.parliament.uk/EDMi/EDMDetails.aspx?EDMID=28872%09%09%09%09%09%09%09&...; Unfortunately in terms of total signatures it is only 571st out of 1468 Early Day Motions put forward by MPs this parliamentary session.   It needs to get closer to the 319 MPs who have signed the EDM on Climate Change (top of the list) or the 312 who have incredibly signed the motion re Lupus Awareness Month.

nrg710 wrote on Jan 20^th, 2006 at 10:09am:


Dear Tin Pusher,

You aren't that Welsh MP with the unusual name are you - Lembit Opik or something if I recall correctly.  Although if you want to station an aeroplane at Newcastle next summer then possibly not?  Also I don't think I saw his name on the list of 52 signatories of the EDM.

If you wrote in the name of Rustbucket Airways though I assume that wouldn't be on Parliamentary letterhead would it?  As you know such letterhead tends to attract the attention of the senior management at the CAA rather more.  I normally feel able to use my Cllr name on the 084/7 issue (since all telephone users in my ward are oppressed by the 084/7 system).  However I need to revert to plain Mr if I am complaining about something like Ofcom failing to call me for interview following my application to become a member of their Ofcom Consumer Panel and Advisory Committee for England.  Since that pays an allowance/salary clearly that can be seen as an issue involving personal gain rather than one affecting many people living in my ward and/or the telecoms policy of the district council.

Regarding calling 0870 numbers from overseas see Page 3 of Ian Bottom's response to the NTS Way Forward consultation:-

www.ofcom.org.uk/consult/condocs/nts_forward/responses/af/bottom.pdf

"Ofcom is aware that callers may experience difficulty in accessing UK non-geographic numbers from outside the UK.  This results from uncertainties over financial returns for routing between international operators caused by the variable cost of calls and imbalances between charges that can be retained or passed on through international arbitrage.  UK callers dialling the non-geographic numbers of other countries from the UK frequently experience the same or similar problems.  Individual countries do not normally permit access to non-geographic numbers from overseas. This is because these services are differently priced from geographic services and it is impossible for an operator in the originating country (which in many cases may not be transmitting the international part of the call) to know what the appropriate price is and for the correct amount to be passed via several carriers and be paid to the terminating operator"

This was in response to a Freedom of Information request email dated 7th July 2005 by Ian Bottom to Ofcom.

Also if anyone is using a Pay as You Go mobile over the North Sea and the call costs them 35p per minute rather than the 5p per minute they were expecting it to then they may find themselves in trouble.  Being in a queue for customer service to have call credit added or being told one's card authorisation has failed just as your plane is running out of fuel could prove to be rather a snag.

Another point regarding you running out of fuel over the North Sea or whatever.

That is that even if you can call the 0870 number at all once your mobile has roamed on to a foreign network the costs will be truly horrendous so likely to exhaust a PAYG phone's call credit before the emergency has been conveyed.

An interesting one to illustrate is Vodafone with their new Passport deal.  With that arrangement if your phone had roamed on to another Vodafone network then if Newcastle was on a geographic number you could call them out of your inclusive call allowance minutes plus a single 75p charge (on a contract) or at 5p per minute on SmartPlus Pay as You Go off peak plus a single 75p service charge.  However if the number you needed to call was an 0870 this favourable Passport tariff would not apply and you would be paying 99p per minute for however many minutes the call lasted.  When I called Vodafone tonight to get this information the first female adviser assured me 0870 was actually National Rate and would be charged as a National Rate call and only when I disconnected myself from this low intelligence lifeform and called again did I find a male adviser with a brain who knew what 0870 was about and could immediately tell me that 0870 costs 99p per minute and is excluded from Vodafone Passport.

Response from the CAA:

Quote:


***I win!***

... well, actually it's not me that's won. It's the whole aviation community that has won. And I'd like to thank the contributors on this thread for their input into this as well.