By James Wanless
President & COO of Talkster
There are some MVNOs based in the Isle of Man who are in the market in the UK offering their numbers as an alternative to standard premium rate numbers. So for example, if someone calls the number, they will share revenue with you. Now, I don’t think that there is anything wrong with premium rate numbers and I have personally been in the business of offering services via premium rate numbers in the UK and around the world for more than 15 years. The problem I have with this is when the appearance of the numbers is used deceptively. You see, all UK mobile numbers appear as +447XXX XXX XXX and to that end, your average consumer caller doesn’t know the difference between a Vodafone mobile number +447880 XXX XXX and an Isle of Man mobile number +447624 XXX XXX
Why does it matter what kind of number it is, as long as it starts with +447? Well, it could mean the difference between a free call included in your calling plan and a very costly one. You have to look carefully at the call rates for your mobile operator to catch this or wait until your first bill and then drop off your chair wondering why these “in plan UK mobile calls” cost you up to 50p a minute and you have to sell your car to pay the bill!
As always happens in the UK, this will fly under the radar for a period of time until the regulators or consumer protection bodies catch up and then a stop will be put to it or the mobile operators will block the calls to these number ranges.
It’s a bit hard in this case because there are also real mobile numbers dialing Isle of Man subscribers’ mobile phones. My guess is that the UK mainland carriers will block access. Manx Telecom will negotiate and either the interconnect rates will drop or Manx will prohibit their use as an alternate premium rate number. In either case, it will mean the end of their use for premium rate calling because when the interconnect fees are lowered, there won’t be any revenue left to share.
To illustrate the difference in cost to call these numbers, here is an extract from the Vodafone website about mobile call charges.
Premium rate services and numbers beginning, for example, 0845 or 09, are charged at a different rate to standard mobile and standard landline numbers. Not all numbers beginning 07 are standard mobile phone numbers – for example, international calling cards start with 07. Calls to these numbers are charged at higher rates than calls to standard mobile phone numbers. When dialing, please be aware of the charges associated with the following prefixes.
These numbers have been trouble before too. Twitter was using Isle of Man numbers for its SMS posts and it seems that a number of people in the UK got caught unawares with the cost of sending SMS to these numbers. So much so that Twitter posted some pricing advice on its site to warn its users.
http://help.twitter.com/index.php?pg=kb.page&id=64
A word of caution for those using the international number: some carriers don’t charge an international fee to use Twitter’s international number. Others, even in the UK, consider it an international number and charge from .15 to .25 per message. Remember to check your phone plan for international rates; be aware that even in the UK, standard messaging rates vary by carrier, and do apply.
So to answer my original question, “are all numbers created equal?” No. They are not. Buyer beware.
