Judgment of the Tribunal on an appeal by Vodafone Limited under section 192 of the Communications Act 2003 against a decision of OFCOM to modify the current system regarding telephone number portability.
The Tribunal concluded that the essential question for it to address in assessing the decision was whether OFCOM equipped itself with a sufficiently cogent and accurate set of inputs to enable it to perform a reliable and soundly based cost benefit analysis.
The Tribunal found that the process by which the decision was reached did not allow stakeholders consulted on proposals to provide realistic estimates of the likely costs of adopting the modifications and that OFCOM had deprived themselves of the opportunity properly to inform their analysis of the potential costs of their proposals. The Tribunal also found that the stated key objective of the decision, the protection of consumers from the effects of network failure, was not a sufficient ground on which to base the decision. Having found that the decision to require implementation of direct routing was flawed, the Tribunal did not need to reach a conclusion regarding the move to recipient-led two hour porting.
Accordingly, the Tribunal held that the appeal against the decision was well founded and remitted the matter to OFCOM.
