Ofcom Probe Three Providers Over Failure to Pay UK Number Charges
Ofcom has announced that they’ve launched a new enforcement programme, which among other things will investigate whether TelNG Limited, ETC Telecom Limited and Number Services Limited have failed to pay charges for phone numbers they have been allocated.
At present, communication providers are required to pay Ofcom an Annual Number Charge in respect of any “Specified Geographic Numbers” which have been allocated to them (GC B1.12), calculated in accordance with GC B1.15. Geographic numbers are fixed-line telephone numbers that begin with the digits ‘01‘ and ‘02‘.
Ofcom said they have “reason to believe that these three providers have failed to pay these fees” and will now investigate whether these companies have broken their rules by failing to pay invoices due. See the page for their related Enforcement Programme for more, which sadly doesn’t add any further detail on the three cases.
Mark is a professional technology writer, IT consultant and computer engineer from Dorset (England), he also founded ISPreview in 1999 and enjoys analysing the latest telecoms and broadband developments. Find me on X (Twitter), Mastodon, Facebook and Linkedin.
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Interesting, does anyone know how much OFCOM are charging communication providers for the number blocks they are allocated?
£1000 per 10k block per year (this applies whether the provider has used 1 or all 10,000 numbers within the block).
It only applies in specific number exhaust areas.
So really it about way of making the practice of “number banking” less profitable. Now I am not suggesting that these business are alleged to be in the practice of “number banking”. It just been alleged that these business haven’t paid there valid dues on time.
“number banking” is a bit like in construction and the problematic issue of “land banking”