Ofcom reads its numbering conditions as an anti-fraud duty, and opens two cases

Ofcom opened enforcement investigations on 24 September into whether numbers allocated to Voxbone SA and Vonage Business Limited are being misused, including to perpetrate scams. Both are own-initiative — the complainant on each case page is Ofcom. Both cite General Conditions B1.6, B1.8 and B1.9(c). Case references are CW/01357/09/26 for Voxbone, which the case page notes operates under the Bandwidth brand, and CW/01355/07/26 for Vonage Business.

The three conditions are numbering-resource conditions. B1.6 requires that allocated numbers be “Adopted or otherwise used effectively and efficiently.” B1.8 requires “all reasonably practicable steps” to secure that customers using the numbers comply with B1, the National Telephone Numbering Plan and the Non-provider Numbering Condition. B1.9(c) bars transferring use of numbers unless they are adopted or otherwise used effectively and efficiently. What Ofcom says those conditions require reads as a downstream-vetting duty: know-your-customer due diligence on business customers so scammers cannot obtain valid numbers, keeping business-customer risk under review by monitoring for potential misuse, and responding proactively to reported incidents. The Voxbone page names monitoring and risk-based due diligence as the practices in view.

That is the KYUP question arriving through numbering conditions rather than attestation rules — who vets the entity you hand a number to, and what you owe when they misuse it. The FCC is working the same duty out in a rulemaking with 25 reply filings and 44 percent opposed; Ofcom is working it out in two open cases under conditions that have been in the General Conditions all along. Both investigations sit under Ofcom’s phone-and-text-scams enforcement programme, and Ofcom says it may open further investigations if it has reasonable grounds to suspect other providers. Watch the Regulatory Watch dispatches for the KYUP side.

Ofcom did not need a new rule for this.