Oftel Consultation – Giving consumers confidence in price comparisons of telecommunication services
Oftel Consultation
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Introduction Page

Response from Magenta Systems Ltd

By Angus Robertson – 15th February 2002

 

Background to Our Service
  1. Magenta Systems Ltd has been publishing it’s UK Telecom Tariff Comparisons at http://www.magsys.co.uk/telecom/ since August 1995, initially free on CIX and Compuserve, then on the web from 1996, and finally becoming a membership service in October 1998.
  2. The comparison is believed to be the broadest available in the UK, covering comparisons of 92 residential and 70 business telephone tariffs charged by 83 different operators and resellers, and is currently in it’s 55th edition, updated about 10 times each year. Each tariff has up to 300 prices, meaning over 1 million separate possible prices. We currently only list 50 different country bands so the volume of data will get vastly higher when we increase this to over 1,000 prices to cover all countries
  3. UK Telecom Tariff Comparisons is a commercial service aimed primarily at businesses and the telecommunications trade, although some residential information is made available free of charge in tabular format. We see ourselves as publishers of valuable impartial information, similarly to the Consumers Association, for which a reasonable price may be charged. Our pricing is based on that of ‘yearbooks’, currently £10 per year for full residential membership, although much information is provided free. Businesses pay £60 per year and the trade £120 per year for tariffs. Effectively business membership subsidises the availability of free information to residential end users.
  4. We are well aware that our current tabular publication format is unmanageable and very difficult to use. But despite the support of most operators and many other business, our revenue flow has not been sufficient to justify the massive investment needed to improve matters without abandoning the volume of information that we currently publish. We do however have major plans to offer an improved service over the next six to 12 months, with some innovative means of telephone bill comparisons for residential and business users.

    5. Specific Comments about the Consultation
  5. We believe end users prefer impartial tariff comparisons. Unlike some comparison sites, membership of our UK Telecom Tariff Comparison site is independent of tariff publication and is the major reason we have such a broad comparison. We don’t charge operators to publish tariffs (as does the Oftel Phonebills site) or receive commission from those operators whose tariffs we publish.
  6. We disagree with section 2.7 of the consultation document that says no site charging for tariffs would be accredited. We believe it will mean only sites offering very limited tariff comparisons would become accredited, to the disadvantage of the end user. We believe that end users need to take care selecting tariffs from sites with commercial arrangements with operators, where the tariffs displayed may not necessarily be the best available. We find it hard to distinguish the requirement in section 2.5 for sites to be independent of operators with 2.8 saying that operators can pay commissions or indeed influence the way data is published.
  7. We don’t believe comparison with energy services is valid, there are only a few companies to compare, with maybe 10 price points each updated maybe once a year, a fraction of the data needed to offer proper telecommunication tariff comparisons. So while energy comparisons may be free, this is much harder for telecommunications.
  8. The consultation talks about entering post code information to determine the geographic area in which operators have service. This would only apply to fixed line operators, whereas the bulk of competition comes from indirectly connected operators. If this requirement remains, fixed line operators should be under on obligation to provide comparison sites with an accurate post code database listing their operational areas. We have attempted to get this information in the past from cable operators, unsuccessfully.
  9. If a site only compares a small number of operators such as fixed line operators only (as does the current Oftel Phonebills site), it should make clear that end users can find much better savings by looking at indirect operators.
  10. The major difficulty with offering telecommunication tariff comparison services is collecting and processing the original tariff data. This is mentioned briefly in section 1.30 of the consultation document, but without any specific proposals as to how this issue should be resolved. This issue should be absolutely central to any accreditation scheme, otherwise Oftel (or it’s agent) will have great difficulty in checking the accuracy of any comparison sites. We appreciate that Oftel policy is to leave tariff bands to the operators, but surely Oftel can issue some general guidance?
  11. The Telecommunications (Open Network Provision) (Voice Telephony) Regulations 1998 already make it a requirement for ‘systemless’ service providers to offer tariffs to end users, although it is certainly not clear whether this is only existing customers or indeed if this relates to business users, nor the level of tariff information that should be published, or whether electronic copies should be made available on request. From long experience, we do know that numerous operators do not publish any tariff information on their web sites and decline to supply it when requested by email. One operator did finally offer tariffs under pressure from Oftel, but this should not be necessary.
  12. Even when tariffs are published, they are often in abbreviated form, showing only selected destinations or bands. Very few operators quote prices for NTS (0845/0870), personal (070) or premium numbers, which is particularly important now that carrier preselection means these calls will be forced to indirect operators by default. The lack of consistent price band naming means it can be time consuming to check a specific call cost.
  13. Magenta Systems Ltd suggests that Oftel should formulate a proposal for the regular publishing of tariffs by all operators, in a computer readable, preferably standardised format, and should actively monitor compliance for the benefit of residential and business users, naming and shaming those operators that decline to do so – similarly to the annual numbering audit. This would appear to be required by law, but does not appear to be enforced.
  14. Publishing tariffs in a standardised format will have many purposes including tariff comparisons, automated least cost routing, call data record pricing and even benefit the operators themselves since it will be much easier to reformat standardised data into different formats for publishing formal price lists and billing systems.
  15. By standardised format, we mean a specific price should be published for each possible charge band, essentially as identified by BT, which we believe to total over 500 bands. Attached to this submission is a spreadsheet created by Magenta Systems Ltd that identifies these separate bands, gives them a unique code (based on the BT codes, ie A1, FM1, P1, etc) and which cross references the current band names used by BT, Kingston, Telewest and Cable & Wireless. Separate prices should be identified for different day part, with minimum call cost or connection cost for each tariff. The UK Telecom Tariff Comparison already includes numbering tables that identify the charge band for each special services code, created automatically by merging the Oftel numbering database with BT’s ‘Number Group Codes used for Specialised Services’ web pages.
  16. Magenta Systems Ltd appreciates that it may take time for any such standardisation to be achieved. A significant number of operators already submit tariffs for our comparison in Excel spreadsheet format, and adding the unique band code would make them much more easily machine readable. Ideally such spreadsheets should be published on the operators’ web site, for access to all interested parties. In the longer term, the definition of a better tariff interchange format using XML would have major benefits.

 

Magenta Systems Ltd, 9 Vincent Road, Croydon CR0 6ED, United Kingdom
Phone 020 8656 3636, International Phone +44 20 8656 3636
Fax 020 8656 8127, International Fax +44 20 8656 8127
http://www.magsys.co.uk/
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