Amendment to the statement entitled Revised statement of policy on the persistent misuse of an electronic communications network or service – published 10 September 2008

Amendment Published 30|10|09 : Following preliminary research carried out by Ofcom and representations received from industry, Ofcom has found some evidence that the timing of when an information message needs to be played in the event of an abandoned call in its present form may diminish the effectiveness of Answer Machine Detection technology.

Background

Following preliminary research carried out by Ofcom and representations received from industry, Ofcom has found some evidence that the timing of when an information message needs to be played in the event of an abandoned call in its present form may diminish the effectiveness of Answer Machine Detection technology.

Ofcom is therefore amending paragraph 4.16.2 of the Revised statement of policy on the persistent misuse of an electronic communications network or service published in September 2008 (the 'Statement) to allow different call centres who use different types of technology to choose from two options with regards to when an information message needs to be played in the event of an abandoned call.

As at the date of publication of the amendment, a recorded message must be played either no later than two seconds after the telephone has been picked up or no later than two seconds after an individual begins to speak (please follow the link below for the formal change to the Statement).

In addition to the change referred to above, we are currently considering other issues with the Statement that industry stakeholders have raised with Ofcom. With regards to these issues, Ofcom will be focusing its analysis on two key areas:

1. whether there are any parts of the Statement that could be expressed more clearly; and
2. whether there are further refinements to the Statement that could secure a reduction in harm to consumers, which also considers the practical operations of dialler technology.

Given the extent of existing harm, however, our current assumption is that we would not be reviewing the more fundamental components of the existing rules, such as the 3% limit on the abandoned call rate as part of our considerations.

For the avoidance of doubt, all other requirements within the Statement remain unchanged. For example, Ofcom will continue to expect that a reasoned estimate of AMD false positives is included in the calculation of the abandoned call rate. We are also maintaining our monitoring and enforcement programme and will continue to undertake both informal and formal investigations which may ultimately lead Ofcom to issue a notification under section 128 of the Communications Act 2003 where it identifies persistent misuse of a network or service.