You know us regulatory types (for those that don’t know, that’s my background). We love our three-letter abbreviations and defined terms etc. So I was excited to learn Simwood had invented a new one – UAP.
The UnAllocated Percentage, or, at a strict level*, calls to numbers which are not in service, is part of our nuisance call monitoring system.
We all fat-finger a telephone number sometimes. Transpose some digits. Can’t read a colleague’s handwriting and think a 3 is an 8, or a 7 is a 1. The occasional wrong number is to be expected – we are human, after all. Even computers that dial for you rely on the number being entered right somewhere. For a regular, genuine, traffic stream, the UAP should be a fraction of a fraction of a %. Some wrong numbers connect – they are just answered calls which are quickly concluded – those to numbers not in service will, absent a fluke of mathematics, always be lower than the total wrong numbers dialled.
Why does UAP matter? Well, once we get beyond a fraction of a fraction of a percentage point, it’s an indication of something wrong. At the volumes we are seeing, it’s not someone with the coffee-jitters trying to return calls, it’s something systematically wrong downstream.
At one end of the spectrum, it’s some bad data. At the other end of the spectrum, it’s some scrote war-dialling UK numbers.
Let’s get something straight here – the calling party needs consent to do direct marketing in the UK. Businesses need consent under GDPR to call people (although that’s a softer form of consent – I’ll spare you the thesis on the nuances, for now). There’s a whole other bunch of rules involved too, regarding automated calling etc.
Unsurprisingly, consent cannot be given to call a number to which you are not a Subscriber. Consent to call a number not in service is not a thing.
Whichever angle you are viewing it from, there is absolutely no legitimate way that war-dialling can be a legitimate source of traffic.
So, when the UAP creeps up, we know there’s scrotitude going on. We will bring down the shutters, and throttle your traffic until you deal with said scrote that’s convinced you to carry their traffic. And until you’ve convinced us that your onboarding and qualification processes filter out potential scrotes.
You don’t even have to wait for your alarms in your NOC to go off because we’ve taken action to protect UK citizens from scrotes – with our depth of interconnection, a 404 from us is pretty darn reliable. Monitor them. See them creeping up, don’t wait for us to tell you to intervene. As Simon and I both said recently, we place weight on action over inaction in our dealings with our customers – mistakes happen, silk-tongued scrotes worm their way into the PSTN from time to time – it’s the response to it that matters.
*for those that care about these things, Allocation and Adoption have very specific meanings in Ofcom’s world. It is technically possible (although should be very rare) to have an Adopted and Allocated number which is not in service. However, everyone understands what “unallocated” means in reality, so that’s what we are using.
