Ofcom’s consultation on future regulation of telephone numbers

Ofcom has launched a consultation which proposes the removal of the requirement to provide a local dialling facility and banning direct and indirect revenue-sharing across geographic and non-geographic number ranges. Local dialling is where a person makes a call from one landline to another landline in the same area without needing to dialling the area code. The migration to IP will affect all landline phone users and is fundamentally restructuring how voice services are provided across the UK. Revenue-sharing occurs where a phone company shares the revenue that it receives for terminating a call with a third party.

These proposals follow on from an earlier consultation published in 2019 in which Ofcom considered how the move to IP networks might change the way geographic (landline) numbers are dialled and whether area codes should be retained. Ofcom also looked at the significance of the out-of-area use of geographic numbers and set out its plans to maintain the existing rules on non-geographic numbers and what the future role might be for 084 and 087 numbers in particular.

The deadline for responses is 02 July 2021.