OFCOM announces proposals to make switching telecoms providers easier

The UK communications regulator OFCOM has announced a set of proposals aimed at making it easier for people to change their telephone landline and broadband providers. Under the heading “making it easier to change telecoms provider”, OFCOM also announced plans to protect telecoms consumers from being “switched” without their knowledge or consent.

OFCOM explained that the reason behind their proposals is that it is important to make sure that consumers have a choice of telecoms providers, and that more importantly, they feel that they are able to easily make their choice. Although telecoms users should be able to switch telecoms providers easily to ensure that have a telephone or broadband provider that best suits their needs, research has shown that consumers face such a large number of problems whilst switching that it puts people off trying to do so. In fact, OFCOM’s research shows that 23% of people who switched telecoms bundles in the last year found the experience difficult, compared to just 4% who switched car insurance or gas suppliers. Meanwhile, research carried out by the watchdog in September 2010 showed that 45% of people thought that switching would be too much hassle.

Examples of the problems often encountered by telecoms customers choosing to switch their suppliers included around 130,000 households in 12 months having the wrong telephone line taken over during the switching process or when moving house, and that when switching broadband around 1/5 consumers lost their service altogether for about a week. Regarding the other problem of having their landline or broadband switched without their consent (known as “slammed), an estimated 520,000 households had this problem over the last year.

OFCOM has therefore proposed some changes which it says would help consumers with the process of changing telecoms providers. Their preferred solution to the problems consumers face is that the new provider would be in charge of managing the switching process. This would mean they would be in charge of transferring the services from the old provider to themselves. However, to guard against the problem of “slamming”, the process would also be checked and verified by an independent third party. This is similar to the method used in the USA and Ireland.

OFCOM’s proposals also aim to simplify the whole process of switching so that it is less confusing and easier for customers, make sure that all telecoms providers are able to compete so that consumers get a real choice with good value for money, make sure that technical problems do not happen, and ensure that customers have accurate information.

Commenting on the proposals, OFCOM CEO Ed Richards said: “Smooth switching processes are essential to ensure that consumers can change providers with confidence. Many people think that the current systems are too difficult and unreliable which is why we have made it one of our priorities to tackle this problem ... it is also essential that people are able to switch easily to exercise their choice. Today’s proposals are designed to make the process easier, more reliable and safe from slamming. We believe that the proposals would improve consumers’ experience of switching and ensure that they continue to benefit from competition.”

To ensure that people do have a choice and access to competiton, OFCOM has accredited a number of online price comparison calculators by independently auditing them and awarding their website the OFCOM price accreditation scheme logo if it passes their tests. They only receive this award if the information they provide is considered to be accessible, transparent, comprehensive, accurate and up to date. Sites that have received the award are Homephone Choices for landline services, SimplifyDigital and Cable.co.uk for landline and broadband services, and Broadband Choices and Broadband.co.uk for just broadband services.

DBS Chess has always believed in making it easy for customers to switch if they wish to, which is why you only have to give us 30 days written notice if you would like to cancel your 0800, 0845, local or 0203 numbers. Customers should have the freedom to choose which provider and service they have, and not be tied in to long contracts which they don’t want or need when circumstances change.

Keep your business options open with virtual phone numbers

Once again we are faced with increasingly depressing headlines in the news when it comes to the economy. Greece has long been in deep financial trouble, and over the last few weeks we have seen its Prime Minister accept a bailout package from the European Central Bank which had as its conditions tough austerity measures, only to then turn around and say that accepting this would be subject to a Greek referendum, then to say the referendum was cancelled, and then to finally resign, leading to days of wrangling trying to put in place a new Prime Minister and new coalition cabinet. This alone would have been pretty scary, but is nothing compared to what is going on in Italy, with their cost of borrowing soaring dramatically in the last few days, finally bringing down long serving Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, and leaving the third largest economy in the Euro teetering on the verge of default. As has been said many times in the last few weeks, Italy is too big to fail, but also too big to bailout. Europe cannot afford to bail Italy out, but if it goes down, it will probably take the Eurozone down with it. A new recession looks increasingly likely as Europe yesterday dramatically cut its growth forecasts, and we are all collectively holding our breath.
 
Of course, it isn’t all bad news. Yesterday there was the fantastic announcement that Jaguar Land Rover are to hire 1000 new staff in Solihull in the West Midlands, which is great news for the local economy there. But for many businesses, this is a time for caution. However, what we really need is the economy to grow, and by taking an increasingly cautious approach, it is hard to see how that is going to happen to the level that is needed. One small way that can help businesses that want to expand their trade but don’t want to make any major investments or changes at this uncertain time is to get a virtual local phone number. 
 
“If a company wants to expand the area it does business in, but understandably doesn’t want to buy or rent new property in that area at the moment, then a great way to do it is by getting a virtual phone number with the area code for that area pointing to your existing landline or mobile phone” says David Clarke, Director of DBS, a leading provider of virtual phone numbers. “For example, getting virtual 020 numbers for London pointing to your mobile or pointing to your property outside of London. Then, you can advertise your number in that area without the commitment of having property there, and in the future if you do decide to get property there, you can take the number with you. You can transfer the numbers to wherever you like, so you get to keep the same numbers so that your customers don’t lose how to contact you”. 
 
DBS Telecoms also provide freephone 0800 numbers, 0845 numbers and international toll free numbers to cater for businesses varied needs.

How using Fax-to-Email can make your office more organised

“If you’re a business which still needs to send and receive faxes, and still uses a fax machine, then DBS offers an alternative which can make your office far more efficient and organised, which can save you money as well as help make you more of a green, energy efficient company: Fax-to-Email”, says DBS Director David Clarke.

Fax-to-Email is a fantastic alternative to using a fax machine. Quite simply, when someone faxes something to you, fax-to-email converts the document into a PDF document and sends it directly to your email inbox.

The benefits of this to your office are huge. Firstly, you no longer need your old fax machine. This is a huge benefit because it means that you no longer have to leave it switched on 24 hours a day, 7 days a week in order to make sure that you don’t miss any faxes. This saves you quite a bit on electricity over the year. It also saves you on paper, ink and toner, because the old fax machine would print out everything that was sent, most of which was often thrown straight into the bin or the shredder. It also saves your staff time, because generally you would have one fax machine per office or department, so someone would often have to go and check it, or go and pick up or keep an eye out for something they were expecting. So, fax to email means you can get rid of your fax machine without getting rid of the ability to receive faxes.

As we all move towards less paper in the office, fax to email is incredibly useful. Most of your correspondence with your clients and customers is probably done through email these days, most documents are probably stored on your computer’s hard drive. Phone calls are probably logged on your computer, and can even be stored on there as recordings thanks to one of the features offered by DBS to accompany their 0800, 0845, 0844, London phone numbers and local phone numbers. Faxes are one of those few things that you have to keep in a file, and with everything else being stored electronically, are most likely to just get forgotten about and gather dust on a shelf. With fax to email, everything is all together on your computer and so makes for a much more organised and efficient filing and record keeping system.

Your fax to email number has to be different from your telephone calls number, but is available from DBS as an 0800 fax to email number, an 0845 fax to email number, an 0844 fax to email number or a virtual local fax to email number, to ensure that your fax number matches for your phone number.  

London 0203 numbers, 0207 numbers and 0208 numbers: the difference

DBS Telecoms is a leading provider of many different types of phone number, including freephone 0800 numbers, revenue sharing 0844 numbers and lo-call 0845 numbers. However, one of its most popular types of phone number is the virtual local phone number. DBS provides virtual phone numbers for 479 different area codes across the UK, and not surprisingly the most popular of these are London phone numbers.

“One of the questions that our customers or potential customers ask most frequently when they call us is ‘what is the difference between 0203, 0207 and 0208 numbers?’” says DBS Director David Clarke. “Well, firstly, there is no such thing as an 0203, 0207 or 0208 area code. The only area code for London is the 020 area code. 020 is the London phone number. 0203, 0207 and 0208 numbers are simply the result of taking the 020 and adding the first digit of the next part of the number to it. The next part of the number only starts with either 3, 7 or 8. It is a common misconception to think otherwise.

“The London 020 number being split into sub divisions is as a result of historical differences.  Numbers starting with 01 were London numbers until 1990. The 01 was followed by three digits, and these three digits corresponded to the area that the phone number was for. In 1990, 01 was split into two different numbers, 071 for Inner London, and 081 for Outer London. In 1995 this became 0171 for Inner London and 0181 for Outer London. In 2000, this was replaced with 020. However, for previous 0171 numbers the first digit of the next part of the number was 7, and for previous 0181 numbers, the next part of the number was 8, so in effect 0207 numbers became the number for Inner London, and 0208 for Outer London.

“As time has gone on, the distinction between the two has blurred, and the introduction of 020 followed by 3 (commonly referred to as 0203) numbers has further blurred that. 0203 numbers cover all of London, and are not specific to any sub division. When people with 0207 or 0208 numbers moved house they kept their numbers, so now there is quite a mix.

“Therefore, when people ask us what the difference is, in short, there is none. It does not matter whether the first digit of the second part of the number is a 3, a 7 or an 8 now, as 020 is the number for London and Greater London, and the second part of the number no longer carries any form of stigma. It does not matter”.

DBS Telecoms sell a wide range of virtual London phone numbers which can be pointed to both landlines and mobile phones. Their London phone numbers are also available as fax-to-email numbers and come with a wide variety of handy additional features.

New study suggests no link between mobile phones and brain cancer

A new study that has been published today in the British Medical Journal which suggests that, contrary to long held popular belief, there is no link between cancer of the brain and the use of mobile phones.

The experiment concluded that mobile phone users were at no greater risk than anyone else of developing brain cancer. The research was carried out by the Institute of Cancer Epidemiology in Denmark, which studied over 358,403 people who use mobile phones over an 18 year period. It found that even those people who had mobile phones over 13 years or more had no higher risk of contracting brain cancer than anyone else. However, they also concluded that mobile phone use warranted continue research to ensure that cancers were not developing over the longer term, as well as continuing to study the effect on children. As was pointed out by Professor David Spiegelhalter of Cambridge University, the comparison is effectively only between early mobile phone users and later mobile phone users, and although an 18 year period seems like a long period of time, this is only looking back to around 1995. One other concern about the research was that it did not include “corporate subscriptions”, ie. people who use their phones for business purposes, which are probably some of the heaviest users of mobile phones. 

For the past 20 years there has been a huge amount of debate and fear over the effects of mobile phones on human health, and this report is the latest contribution to that debate. The World Health Organisation still feels that mobile phones could be carcinogenic, and puts them in the same category as coffee, a category whereby a link cannot be categorically ruled out but also cannot be categorically proven. Hazel Nunn, Head of Evidence and Health Information at Cancer Research UK said “These results are the strongest evidence yet that using a mobile phone does not seem to increase the risk of cancers of the brain or central nervous system in adults”. The UK Department of Health’s official advice is still that anyone under the age of 16 should only use mobile phones for essential reasons and aim to keep phone calls as short as possible while their brain is still developing.

Commenting on the report, David Clarke, Director of DBS Telecoms – a leading supplier of 0800 numbers, 0845 numbers, virtual London phone numbers and international toll free numbers said: “I remember going back about 10 or 15 years many people were frightened about getting a mobile phone due to health reasons. Now there are more mobile phones in the UK than there are people, with figures showing high percentages of children using them. Health concerns seem to have been forgotten about or ignored over time, but they are still there lurking in the background. Whilst the headlines from this report seem pretty conclusive, there still seems to be quite a bit of ambiguity when you look beneath the surface, and whilst the results are encouraging, there is still uncertainty of the effects over long periods of time.”

DBS Telecoms to provide International Virtual Numbers

Following last month’s announcement that DBS will now be vastly expanding its selection of freephone numbers to include not just 0800 numbers for the UK but also toll free numbers for 106 other countries across the globe, the leading telecoms provider is now pleased to announce that it will also be expanding its virtual local numbers.

DBS currently offers virtual local numbers for around 500 different towns and cities across the UK. Following this announcement, it will now be providing the same service but internationally. DBS Telecoms will therefore be providing international virtual numbers for 4,000 cities across the globe.

The principle behind the idea is exactly the same as the principle behind the virtual local numbers that DBS currently offers, but will be on an international scale rather than just a UK wide scale.  So, for example, if you’re a company based in London, but want to have a presence in Los Angeles, San Francisco, New York and Washington DC, then you can get an international virtual number for each of these US cities pointed to the phones of your offices here in the UK, and advertised accordingly in these American cities. This then provides your international customers with a number they are familiar with rather than a “strange foreign number” which they might feel uncomfortable phoning, and allows you to expand where you do business without actually having to relocate, purchase new premises or hire new staff in a different country.  These numbers can be pointed to any landline or mobile phone number worldwide.

Commenting on the launch, DBS Director David Clarke said: “We have always been pleased to offer virtual numbers for 479 different UK area codes, and will continue to offer this service, but this new option will satisfy the needs of our customers who want to do business overseas. We are delighted that there is such a demand for international numbers and that our clients are expanding to operate internationally, and very much hope that this trend continues”.

Extra Features for London Numbers

DBS Telecoms offers a wide range of virtual London phone numbers covering the three different sub-categories of 020 numbers – 0203 numbers, 0207 numbers and 0208 numbers. These numbers are available to be pointed at either existing landline or mobile telephones, and there are also a wide range of extra features offered by DBS which can accompany them.
 
“Press 1 For Sales” service
When a customer or client dials your virtual 020 London number, they will have a welcome message inviting them to press 1 for sales, press 2 for accounts, etc. to make you appear as a professional, large, well structured company.  The message and options can say what you want it to say, and can all point to the same number, or to a string of different numbers. 
 
Call Whisper
There is currently a free 30 day trial at DBS on this feature. Because a virtual London phone number is pointed to either an existing landline number or an existing mobile number, when the phone rings you do not know if the incoming call is ringing your existing landline or mobile phone number or if they are calling your virtual 020 number. The “Call Whisper” is a feature which plays a short recorded message when you answer the phone if someone is calling on your London 020 number. So, if it is a call to your normal number, you don’t hear a message, but if someone calls on your 0203, 0207 and 0208 number then you will hear a message saying “London number” “virtual number” “local number” “business number” or whatever you want it to say. This ensures you answer your London number professionally, knowing what sort of call it is coming in. The caller does not hear the message. 
 
Voicemail
If someone phones your virtual London phone number then you want to have a voicemail message so that your customers or potential customers can leave you a message. If they’re just faced with a phone that rings continuously, they probably won’t bother phoning back. DBS’s voicemail not only takes a message like a normal voicemail, but emails the message as a recording straight to your email inbox increasing the chance of you replying right away, and also notifies you of the numbers of anyone who didn’t leave a message, thus increasing your chance of not missing any customers.

Fax to Email Service
If you purchase a virtual London phone number then you might want to consider getting a London fax to email number as well. Not only will it mean that your London fax number matches your London phone number, but it also ensures you receive your faxes in a more environmentally, cost effective way. Fax to email converts your faxes to PDF and sends them straight to your email inbox, saving you on paper, ink, toner and electricity.
 
Call Recording
DBS offers two different call recording options for its virtual 020 numbers, for inbound and outbound calls. The feature allows you to record your phone calls, and then emails you the recording straight afterwards so that you can keep it for your records or use it for training purposes. 
 
Greeting Message
This is a personalised recorded message that can be played when someone phones your London phone number, such as “Thank you (company name), your call is important to us and will be answered shortly” or whatever you would like it to say.
 
Call Queuing
If you have more calls at once than you can answer to your London phone number, this feature places them in a queue, tells them they are in a queue, plays them music, plays messages of your choice, and holds up to 50 people at once. 
 
Online Call Statistics
If you want to keep track of your London 0203, 0207 or 0208 number then this feature is ideal. You can check out the numbers that have called you, the time they called, the duration of calls, how quickly calls were answered, calls missed and more. 
 
Divert on Busy or No Answer
DOBNA diverts your calls to a list of other numbers, so for if example if you’re not in the office, it diverts your call to your mobile. All you need to do is supply DBS with the numbers. 
 
Time of Day Routing
If you want your virtual London number pointed or routed to different numbers at different times of the day then this feature makes that possible. So, for example, you can have your virtual 020 number pointed at your office phone number between 8.30 and 5.30, and at your mobile phone the rest of the time.
 
DBS Director David Clarke said: “The virtual London phone numbers are great on their own because they help hard pressed small businesses who want to do business in London, but cannot afford London premises. It means they can be based just outside London where offices are cheaper, but still have a London number to appeal to London clients. These features make things even easier for them. We constantly review what businesses want and need in order to do well and aim to provide them, which is what we feel these businesses do. In tough economic times, every bit of extra help is hugely valuable.”