Oftel

Groups is shutting down, and taking with it a piece of critical national infrastructure: the Oftel Yahoo Group which is used for managing UK phone number assignments.

“That’s the purpose of the Oftel group,” says Woodhead.

“If you were to ask them what the formal process and means for operators to announce active number ranges to each other is, they wouldn’t have an answer because the answer is the Oftel Yahoo group.”

The increase in usage of smartphones such as Apple Inc's iPhone and Samsung Electronics Co Ltd's Galaxy has corresponded with a further drop in voice calls to the lowest point since Ofcom's predecessor Oftel began regulating telecoms in the 1980s.

Created from the ashes of the Independent Television Commission, the Broadcasting Standards Commission, the Radio Authority and telephony regulators Oftel, Ofcom was the last government's attempt at a super-regulator.