Communications

A Call For All Companies To Provide Alternative Phone Numbers to Special Rate and Non-Geographical Numbers
A call for companies to provide national number alternatives to the special rate and non-geographical numbers that many companies currently use. The reason being that many people now pay a fixed monthly fee for free anytime calls, and if companies do not offer a national number alternative, callers can be billed substantially on top of their telephone package agreement for the facility of phoning them. If companies cannot see their way to providing freephone numbers for their customers, this is the least they could do.

141 Number Withheld
A call to abolish the 141 number withheld facility, which currently gives rise to many instances of people receiving disturbing, abusive and nuisance phone calls, something that would not happen if callers could always be identified. The fact that callers can withhold their number and maintain anonymity actually encourages some people to indulge in this perverse and sad past time. Nobody should be able to enter your home through the front door without presenting identification, neither should they be able to enter your home electronically over the phone line. In this day and age it is not unreasonable to say that if you are not prepared to divulge your number you should not be calling in the first place.

Bar Number Withheld Calls
The telephone service providers do offer a service allowing customers to bar number withheld calls and in some instances this facility can be turned on and off from your own phone by dialing a code. If you are getting nuisance calls of any sort from a caller withholding their number, it may be worth enquiring about this facility. However, currently service providers do charge for this facility and there is some doubt as to whether it is completely effective because callers dialing from a phone that is permanently wired to withhold their number can still get through the block by dialing a prefix of 1470. Once they have done that, they are able to get through to your phone in the normal fashion, so enabling anyone who has their number permanently withheld to be able to still contact you. However, when you dial 1471 there is still no record of who is calling you, just an announcement telling you that the caller's number is not available. Therefore, it appears that paying to bar number withheld calls is a somewhat waste of time and money, because people can still get through to you without exposing their number. The whole issue needs further investigation so as to find a way of stopping people abusing the system and being able to make disturbing, abusive and nuisance calls and the simplest solution is to ban this facility, which is not in step with modern security advice and precautions, and which is so open to possible abuse, altogether.

Mobile Phone Mast Sharing Scheme
A suggestion that perhaps mobile phone networks could share the same transmission masts and so alleviate the need for having four network masts in every location. If it were possible for the networks to share a common mast, or location, the other three masts can go into areas of low coverage where they would then be of more use, so helping to achieve an even and uniform coverage of the U.K. for all networks.

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