We’re working through digesting the NGCS changes and as we mentioned in our analysis, they make for massive change.
As it is really important that you hit the ground running on July 1st both in terms of compliance with the changes and avoiding the many rate changes catching you out, we’ve published a draft rate sheet showing the new Service Charges and component number ranges as we know them so far. With this you can see how things should look for July 1st and plan ahead.
Unfortunately, as we indicated in our last post, there are a lot of number ranges which have not been updated for the new changes and thus both old charge-bands and new charge-bands will be present in rates sheets. If Ofcom enforces its rules and does so in a timely fashion (neither can be assumed) then the old charge-bands will disappear. They will have to remain in the meantime and the transition itself is something to watch out for as the new rates can be so very different on familiar number ranges.
In processing this we have amended our previous indication that our Access Charge would differ for 08 and 09 numbers. As Service Charges now span both types of numbers in many cases this would have meant the creation of 146 new charge-bands which seems more ridiculous than the 73 we cannot avoid. We will therefore be applying a single Access Charge of (presently) 0.33ppm subject to a formal rate update nearer the time.
We’re making this information available early for your convenience. There will be other rate updates over June so this information is just a draft and will change between now and then. It will be formally released in the normal course of rate updates in the week prior to July 1st.
If you are an active customer, then please contact our Operations Desk if you’d like a copy of our NGCS rate/code files. They will not be available publicly or for non-customers until the formal rate notification, which is probably when our competitors will make them available too.
