Panel to "stop anti slamming" ??

The problem is, we have a system of rules now which all ISPs should follow, it's no good ISPs trying to usurp them. I think it would be terrible if Plusnet, TalkTalk, BT, Sky, the reseller down the street, all started to implement this system. You call it a 'safeguard' system, I call it an "anti-migration" system and it is a breach of Ofcom regulation in my opinion.

You say "the customer is under no pressure to set it to safety" - I may equally say "the customer is under no pressure to give consent to the gaining provider". You are presuming the anti-migration system works perfectly 100% of the time. I can also play that game then, and presume the migration system works perfectly 100% of the time, and question why would you then need the anti-migration system in the first place.

We all know that in reality, ISPs make mistakes all the time, especially when it comes to accounts, portals, updating, records. We may think if something is selected on a system, the consequence follows perfectly in all linked systems of the ISP. But I can show you countless examples where a product is selected, the bill does not follow. Heck, I can even show you a bill that says "Free caller ID: £0, then charge for caller ID in the next line"! I can point to systems which don't update but are meant to automatically update and haven't been fixed in years with customers suffering. I can show you lots of examples where a request is made to do or undo something in writing or over the phone, and it is not done, sometimes there is no record of it being asked. And so on and so on.

So just as a mistake can be made resulting in slamming, a mistake can be made resulting in anti-migration. Just as deliberate slamming can occur due to the obvious incentive for the gaining provider, so can deliberate anti-migration occur as there is an incentive for the losing provider. Just as imposters or hackers can cause slamming, so can imposters or hackers cause anti-migration.

The losing provider says they have a record of consent to never migrate. The gaining provider says they have a more recent record of consent to migrate. The losing provider with their little system is presuming their consent is better and takes precedence than the gaining provider's consent when they have no right to do so at that stage. They should instead follow the rules as intended, not presume they can sneak around them because they think they are superior to other ISPs, that defeats the system.

If an undesired migration takes place the customer is screwed.

If a desired migration fails due to the user forgetting to clear the "Do not migrate" flag, it loses the user at most a fortnight and possibly only two days, and is entirely their own fault.

If a desired migration fails due to the losing ISP's incompetence or dishonesty then the sanctions available to Ofcom will be exactly the same as those they have with their new system should anything untoward happen. Still a fortnight or less lost, at no real cost.

There's nothing not to like about giving the consumer control of their own connection.

In reply to a post by gah789:

Yes and no. If I had sought specific information that my broadband service would be provided by a particular wholesaler or mechanism, then transferring the service to a different wholesaler could be interpreted as breaching the implied terms on which I entered into the contract. In such cases, the ISP should offer the option of breaking the contract if I do not wish to transfer.

The courts do not readily imply terms into contracts. Merely seeking information about a current wholesale arrangements prior to entering into a contract does not necessarily make ongoing provision of service using that wholesaler a term of the contract. Indeed, I would argue that it cannot be said that it was in the mind of the service provider at the time of contract formation that some past enquiry about how service was provided should become an explicit term of the contract.

The general position is that the terms of a contract are what an independent third party believes the parties agreed on at the time of contract formation. If you want a specific term in the agreement, you should make it an explicit part of the agreement reached.

In reply to a post by gah789:

The substantive issue is fixed line phone numbers. Some of us are unwilling to accept any possibility of losing a longstanding phone number. Regulatory practice assumes that these are, in effect, the property of the person to whom the number is allocated. However, ISPs cannot guarantee that a phone number can transfer between different LLU operators or LLU and non-LLU operators. Whatever an LLU wholesaler may claim about future transfers these are promises that they may not be able or have no incentive to honour in future. So such promises are worthless. There is no obligation on a provider to accept the transfer of an existing phone number, though the losing provider must permit the user to transfer if another provider will accept it.

Of course, the solution is to have separate broadband and fixed contracts but the whole thrust of the business is to bundle these together so many people may get caught out.

I think possible loss of phone numbers is no greater or less a risk under these rules than under the previous migration regime. The change here is to do with the system that migrates end user's physical connections and associated numbers between retail providers. Unless I have missed something, there is no change in the freedom of the retail provider to change the wholesale provider(s) used to deliver the service.

I would expect a retail provider to be forbidden from forcing a customer into renumbering unless that renumbering was technically unavoidable (such as closure, deallocation or renumbering of the entire numbering block in question) or the customer had breached the contract - and that a court would be willing to entertain the possibility there is an implied term to that extent. I would argue that retail providers accept any future restrictions on the selection of wholesale provider because of the customer's number when they agree to accept a port in.


We'd be rather annoyed if we lost either of our numbers, though this is unlikely as they both were originally issued by BT - one in 1981 and the other in the mid 1990s. BT issued numbers tend to be the most portable.

They should and can certainly be issued quickly. I had to chase Coms for my MAC (was told to email, got no reply so phoned up). After i phoned saying i had emailed and got nothing, it was issued within 5 minutes.

Now in that instance i can see why changing the rules is better. No customer should have to chase the losing ISP for their MAC code.

In reply to a post by RobertoS:

There's nothing not to like about giving the consumer control of their own connection.

All well and good until some "system error" at an ISP "accidentally" blocks a customer's desire to migrate. Plenty of fun then for the customer wishing to migrate to get this "system error" fixed.

If a desired migration fails due to a failure in the anti-migration system it can be just as big a screw-up for the customer as the other way round. A lot can happen in a fortnight: their £100 Sainsbury's voucher offer can expire, their ISP can suddenly withdraw their 40/20 package and replace it with 40/2, their Quidco cashback can be rejected and not reinstated due to the manual re-order, they may be forced to suffer with a broken or poorly performing product for yet another two weeks. And so on. (I could play your game and just brush off an undesired migration too, it's the user's own fault for signing up drunk to Sky isn't it? and even if he was in the Arctic and got slammed at the same time, it's only a fortnight on a service he doesnt want till it gets switched back, same as the other way round, so no big deal....)

You miss the whole point too. Ofcom have no specific regulation dealing with this 'anti-migration' system, so how can they deal with ISPs or instances where they do something wrong with that system. That means permitting the system in the first place, along with defining and accepting what they should and shouldn't do with that system. This does not exist, so ISPs should not be inventing systems that usurp the rules. The consent lies with the gaining provider, and once gained due process should follow.

Exactly. How many times would you have try again till it is "fixed". Did you also know there is 60 days notice to remove BBISP's consent for anti-migration, it's in the small print. That's the beauty of inventing your own rules against the system

It wouldn't surprise me if WLR3-based providers have whipped up this "slam-phobia" to maintain control over their customers' ability to migrate. After all, most people don't even use WLR3 (and therefore aren't subject to the MAC process) and slamming does not seem to be an issue. And of course MPF providers could always slam WLR3 connections anyway.

Edited by Oliver341 (Sun 21-Jun-15 23:18:14)

So you are saying AAISP, the only ISP I'm aware of implementing this user-controlled block, are lying that it is because of customer disquiet?

Re MPF suppliers slamming WLR3 lines, that's precisely why I say Ofcom have got this the wrong way round.