TELECOM 247

Hi chaps,

New to this group but it looks interesting, not least because I am an
ex GPO Telephones/Post Office Telephones/British
Telecommunications/British Telecom/BT: engineer.

Anyway heres my question:

A club to which I belong, have introduced an 0300 range number
alongside their 0845 number. They state in their magazine, that calls
to this number are charged at local rates and are also treated by call
providers as equivalent to a geographic landline, and thus included in
free calls to UK landlines category, and so can come out of call
allowances.

Is this correct? I cant see the point if it is, as to all intents
and purposes, local and national geographic calls are charged the same
these days - arent they? - I could be wrong, but my carrier charges
the same for all UK geo landline calls. In which case the club could
just have published their geographic number!

Am I missing something significant here?

TIA chaps,

Neil

(Reply via NG please)

Neil wrote:

Ive just viewed http://www.ttnc.co.uk/numbers/03-numbers.do and myself
have failed to grasp the benefit.

It might be to do with memorable numbers or just location, perhaps
some organisations would prefer to be associated with the UK rather than
a specific geographic location.

Geoff Lane

Neil wrote:

The whole point of the 03 prefix is that calls to them will be charged at
the same rate as to terrestrial, 01 or 02 prefix, numbers that are distant
enough to be a national rate call. Telecoms suppliers are not allowed to
charge more for calls to 03 prefix numbers than they do to 01 or 02 prefix.
It really puts things back to the position before companies got greedy and
charged higher rates to 0870 prefix numbers. After a certain date the 03
prefix will replace the 0844, 0845 and 0870 prefiices

Peter Crosland

g6jns@yahoo.co.uk

Neil wrote:

In the case of a single club with a geographic influence, maybe 03 is
not the best choice, but consider a company (or government department)
which has offices all over the country or potentially call centers. What
number should they publish? A London number? Birmingham? 20 numbers, one
for each call center?

The answer, now, is an 03 ukwide number which will be routed by them to
wherever they need to call to go. Has the same IN benefits as an
0845/0870 number in that respect, but is charged to the call at the same
rate as 01/02. Of course 01/02 numbers can do the same hunting/routing,
but which areacode do you pick, when any one areacode doesnt really apply?

Regards,

Peter Crosland wrote:


Not quite. This is what Ofcom told me in September of last year:

Ofcom has announced plans to undertake a further review of the 0845
range next year, with the aim of making a similar change as 0870 -
repairing the linkage to local call charges. Apart from this, Ofcom
currently has no plans to curtail revenue sharing on the other 08 ranges
(0844 and 0871).

Geoff Lane wrote in
news:fvabon$5gk$1@news.datemas.de:


I work for a company that has offices in many parts of the UK. We have
a single set of 5-digit extension numbers for internal use, but to work
out the external number you have to refer to a long list of possible
translations. For example, extension 6xxxx is 020 7nn6 xxxx whereas
83xxx is 0161 nn8 3xxx.

We tried for a while giving everyone a London 020 number, but customers
in eg Manchester were confused to be given a London number to call a
local office, which is why we moved to the current scheme.

It would be ever so much easier to rememeber, and I think easier for our
customers, if we used 03n nnnx xxxx, where nnnn was the same for all our
offices.

So theres one benefit.

Peter

--
Peter Campbell Smith ~ London ~ pjcs00 (a) gmail.com

On 30 Apr, 17:29, Neil wrote:

On Thu, 1 May 2008 06:55:39 -0700 (PDT), Steve
wrote: