Ofcom - 1989

February Oftel published the MMC report on Chatlines and other message services.

April BT announced there would be a code change in London from 01 to 071/081 in 1990.

July Oftel published a consultative document on ’Numbering for Telephony into the 21st Century’. This looked at options such as code recovery and ten-digit dialing.

August The Director General recommended to the Secretary of State that suitably qualified installers and maintainers should be able to connect call routing apparatus without the pre-connection inspection by the network operator then required. A BSI scheme to qualify installers and maintainers was introduced in 1990.

November A new version of the class licence (Branch Systems General Licence) under which the vast majority of people ran their telecoms systems (including residential customers) was issued. This allowed simple resale of spare capacity on private circuits leased from public telecommunications operators.

Unsolicited sales calls by fax or telephone were regulated under this version for the first time.

A determination was made to bring into force in December the amendments made to BT’s operating licence to regulate multiline chatlines and one-to-one live premium rate services, following the MMC reference in 1988. Under the new regulations a code of practice had to be agreed by the Director General – a code was agreed in December. Under the code a compensation scheme for unauthorised use and rules on content were introduced. Similar licence conditions were agreed for the licences of Mercury, Kingston, Cellnet and Vodafone.

December On Oftel’s advice the Department of Trade and Industry announced that three personal communications network (PCN) licences would be awarded. The original licensees were Mercury PCN, Microtel and Unitel (all consortia).

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