Madrid, April 3, 2023.

This is what the companies consulted by Adding Servicios Inteligentes, providers of this service, who prefer to remain anonymous, think

The Ministry of Economic Affairs and Digital Transformation has recently published a Draft Order whose content represents a significant change in the way the service is applied. At the moment it is in the period of allegations. In said project they contemplate changes in the application of the service that could put at risk the viability of the provider companies and therefore, the service. The main changes can be found in the fourth paragraph: "The The measures introduced by this Order are intended to put an end to such fraudulent practices, guaranteeing that the service attributed to this numbering actually consists of the adequate provision of a telephone consultation service on subscriber numbers.To this end, among other measures, establishes the requirement of prior express request from the end user for access to any of these 118AB numbers, sets a new limitation on the duration of the call and eliminates the possibility that telephone consultation service providers on subscriber numbers incorporate the call progression facility". Well, this requirement of prior express request by the user to his telephone company could mean, in practice, according to professionals in the sector, "the collapse of the service". They speak of a drop of more than 95% in call traffic. This practice, called Opt-in in the sector, has already been done in other cases such as 907 with the result of the total collapse of the service, in high-level 80Y numbers, which was also applied. With this background, according to these experts, the behavior of the user is what it is and in this sense it is probable that the behavior is similar. The application of this norm could "put at risk a service that for more than two decades has provided coverage to a large part of the population and At present it is widely used by elderly consumers, basically because they are not very knowledgeable in the Internet and there are telephone numbers that are really difficult to obtain by browsing the Internet and they prefer to call, aware of the price of the call, the which is informed both in the welcome announcement and in the call transfer if the user wishes to be transferred". Another group that could be affected are the citizens of rural areas where there is no network coverage and navigation is impossible over the internet, in this case, "that call is your lifeline". If the Opt-in is made and given what happened with the high-level 907 and 80Y numbers, the consumer could be seriously affected, but also the companies providing the service and Of course, your employees. About the rest of the issues: Limitation of time to 2 minutes (currently 10) and elimination of the call progression. By eliminating the call progression, the user will not be able to choose between carrying out the consultation in a single call or writing down the telephone number and making two. You will have to make two calls in any case, since the facility to transfer the call is eliminated. The average time of the call without transfer is around 3 minutes, with the change proposed by the Project, the call is cut automatically to the 2 minutes and, in many cases, the consumer will not have been able to receive the service due to its brevity and will have to call again, with the additional cost that this entails. In short, what it is about is legislating with the help and advice of the industry professionals. The current regulatory body for the service is the CNMC, which, knowing the market, is the one that proposed the changes it considered to the Ministry on duty. Well, in this case it is the Ministry who directly prepares the project individually. There are other aspects in the text in which the Service providers are in favor, such as point 4 at the level of billing and customer information or the consumer protection implied by the first paragraph of point 5: "The disagreement or disagreement of an end user with the billing of telephone consultation services on subscriber numbers may not give rise to the suspension or interruption of the voice communications service if the end user pays the amount thereof, excluding the remuneration that corresponds to the providers of the telephone consultation service on subscriber numbers and without prejudice to the debt that may subsist for the unpaid amount for the telephone consultation service on subscriber numbers". The Service providers state that they are in favor of all those policies that improve the rights of users without undermining those of the provider in such a way that both Market players coexist in a fair balance for both parties and with the greatest possible protection for the consumer. .

ContactContact name: Christian RedondoContact description: Christian RedondoContact phone: 644104870