Posts by Restitution Prevails

Thanks for U-turning on biz-killing ban, Ofcom – now cough up, say GSM gateway bods

Re: He and his wife both went bankrupt?

I think you will find Mr McCabe refers to the fact he has been fighting for justice for 14 years rather than the business had been trading for that long. In almost all cases the businesses had been trading for 1-2 years before Ofcom passed a judgement on the use of GSM Gateways making it unlawful for all those businesses to continue operating.

Re: Huh?

The key aspect to this matter is the timing and the handling of the original case. A number of business started at the turn of the millennium harnessing newly available technology, tech that bore CE accreditations, and enabled businesses to provide LCR (Least Cost Routing) services to consumers and businesses when they needed to call a mobile phone from a landline.

At the time the MNOs (Mobile Network Operators) where imposing a charge on anyone who wanted to reach someone on a mobile phone on their network of about 25p p/min - which was why back then, BT or Mercury were charging the landline customers (that was you) 30p. However, because very little was known about the intricacies of telephony by the masses, the overriding public opinion was that BT (and Mercury) were overcharging their customers and it was sour grapes because they didn't have mobile offerings themselves.

The regulator back then, Oftel, carried out an assessment of the MNOs and found they (the MNOs) had a monopoly when it came to connecting calls to users of their networks. GSM Gateways provided competition to this issue by converting a landline call destined to ring a mobile into being a landline call in effect put on hold, then using a SIM for the destination network to redial the mobile number (and benefit from a cheap same network to same network call rate [tariff]) and then connect the two calls together. This all happened in milliseconds so the person making the call would not be inconvenienced but could benefit from a much more reasonable call cost - half price usually.

The MNOs where beside themselves at the prospect of loosing their supra profit opportunity and so began their march to complain and latterly just disconnect any GSM Gateway operator they thought they'd found using their SIMs whilst also charging the company until the end of the SIM card contract period even though they had blocked the SIMs from being used - jolly sharp practice.

In the end pressure from the MNOs which culminated in government whips lobbying the Home Office (HO) resulted in the regulator (now Ofcom) making a weak finding that stated the use of GSM Gateways when used to provide a commercial service by a business unlawful, but added those people who had already invested in building businesses should work with the MNOs to try to bring their GSM Gateway networks to operate under the MNOs licences with MNO approval - something the MNOs clearly had no intension of doing.

Had Ofcom simple banned the operation at that point the people operating equipment would have had a clear point of finality and some compensation and that would have been the end of it - but the regulator deliberately or through negligence or for other reasons decided it was prudent to in effect delay the closure of the businesses which just made it painful for all.

As far as the consumer and competition was concerned, the MNOs supra profits continued which ultimately empowered them to pick off the FLOs (Fixed Line Operators) as their revenues dwindled as mobile telephone subscriber growth blossomed partly because using landline telephony to call mobiles was priced out (by the MNOs) of the game and it was best to get a PAYG (pay as you go) mobile to call family and friends on their mobiles or in the case of business mobile telephone fleets grew and grew and the MNOs put mini gateways into businesses to keep them happy - something the old GSM Gateway operators were prohibited from doing.

A week or so ago Ofcom decided actually they got it wrong and GSM Gateways should be legalised. Interestedly, Vodafone actually stated in their response that if Ofcom did legalise full commercial operation of Gateways, they wouldn't be amending their internal policy which is now (and has been for some time) to ban them in any event. Quite a bold statement really, they don't care about the law if it effects their profits. Their view is that if you've got a problem with calling mobiles from landlines, you should buy another mobile phone - and most definitely one of theirs!

Consumers 0 - MNOs 1

Re: How would a 999 call be routed via a GSM gateway?

In the first case you are quite correct, there is no scenario where a GSM Gateway under normal operation would come to dial 112 or 999 - so in that case it's a red herring.

In the alternative, whereupon a call is placed to 112 or 999 by a GSM Gateway, as unlikely as that may be, the control room would be presented with the underlying CLI of the SIM card that made the call. In many cases they would also have either to hand or via a quick reference access to the IMEI (the international mobile equipment number - the unique code for the handset [or the channel in the case of it coming from a GSM Gateway]), the base station ID from which the call connected to and the subscriber details of the SIM.

Calls to 112 and 999 from a SIM provide an accurate datum insofar as traceability is concerned. The same cannot be said for VoIP where an IP address may well have passed through a number of proxies thereby disguising the originating point on a network.