Thank you for your e-mail regarding the telephone number used for 'Homes
Live'. I note your concerns over the use of an 0870 prefix; a BBC Audience
Services spokesperson has issued the following guidance on this service:

'Where the BBC answers enquiries about programmes or services including
booking tickets, or handles audience comments and complaints, the charging
policy set by the BBC in 1998 when approving the investment proposal in the
Capita-run BBC Information service, was that a move from a geographic
London number to a 'national rate' 0870 numbers would help contain demand
and help deter trivial calls. Paying the full cost of the call also meant
that the caller was the same situation as a letter writer who has to pay
for a stamp. In 2005, Cable and Wireless reported that 4 out of 5 callers
to BBC paid 15p or less and 9 out of 10 less than 21p for their call -
actually cheaper than a stamp. The other advantage of an 0870 number,
rather than a geographical number, was that it did not imply the BBC was
solely based in London, or any other one location. The BBC does not make
any money for itself from audience phone calls or text messages.

From the 1st August 2007, 0870 numbers have reduced further to the same as
the costs of calling geographical numbers beginning with 01 or 02 and may
be called 'national rate' numbers.

The most common criticism is that 0870 numbers have become unjustifiably
relatively expensive for callers, as BT and other telephone networks have
introduced packages that allow cheap 'long distance' calls for as little as
1p/minute and include 'free minutes'. These packages are taken up by
increasing numbers of people but they exclude special numbers such as 0870
and 0845 which have therefore become relatively expensive at up to 6 pence
per minute peak time.

However, more important than the relatively low cost of calling the BBC is
whether the BBC is providing value to its audience. There are very few
complaints about the mass access telephone systems or the freephone
helplines and for normal business, BBC Information achieves very high rates
of customer satisfaction independently measured by Ipsos MORI, with 86%
rating the service 8 or more out of 10.

A new number range beginning 03 will be available in the future as an
alternative to 0870. The costs will be the same except for subscribers to
discount rates who will be able to call 03 at the relevant discount rates
that apply to calls to 01 or 02 numbers. The BBC will be reviewing whether
the costs of changing its existing 0870 numbers is worth the potential
savings to some callers.

The BBC does not make any profit from 0870 numbers. The numbers do bring
some technology and operational benefits for the BBC and callers; also in
return for waiving the 'revenue share' from 0870 calls the telephone
networks supply the BBC with a higher level of service which would
otherwise cost the licence fee payer more to provide. The value of these
saved costs is significantly more that the value of the revenue share
foregone.

The BBC does not use 0800 numbers for everything - whereby callers could
call for free as with e-mails - as the problem with 0800 numbers is that
they attract a lot of nuisance or trivial calls. Extending the 0800 numbers
beyond the existing use for helplines would waste licence fee money,
increase the staff frustration in dealing with time-wasting calls,
particularly at night, and probably produce an overall reduction in quality
of service as genuine callers found it more difficult to get through.'

I trust that this response has clarified the issue. Thank you for taking
the time to contact BBC Information.

Regards


Anne Lavan
BBC Information