Sagentia contributes to a number of high-profile consultations

Sagentia’s continuing involvement with Ofcom - the UK’s communications regulator – has seen the company contributing to a number of recent high-profile consultations, including one on Number Portability and another on the Digital Dividend. Both public consultations were initiated by Ofcom towards the end of 2006.

Number portability - the facility that enables subscribers to retain their telephone numbers when switching from one provider to another – is intended to promote competition. But ironically it is currently implemented using ‘call forwarding’ which makes changing providers time-consuming, in some cases even reducing competition. Ofcom needed to consider whether there was a case for mandating an alternative ‘central database’ implementation. This could have benefits for consumers but it is also expensive to implement and affects different operators unevenly – hence the need for consultation.

Sagentia’s study, which provided background information for the consultation process, focused on the costs to fixed and mobile operators of changing to the central database approach. Sagentia looked at the costs and benefits in the light of moves by operators towards new types of network known as Next Generation Networks (NGNs). It was found that there was a strong case for mandating central database approaches for NGNs and for mobile networks, but not for the older types of fixed network, and Ofcom has taken this into account in formulating its proposals.