Non-geographic 0870 fax numbers were first introduced in the 1990’s and for very good reason.

An advantage of using an 0870 fax number allowed smaller companies to promote themselves as a national player, when in fact they were actually located in a small relatively unknown town or village. However 0870 fax numbers gave the impression they were on the same playing field as their bigger competitors and so increasingly gaining comparisons to their competitors. Whereas the actual truth was that they were just around the corner, as indeed some were.

The real excitement with the 0870 fax number was that it was portable. So if a business relocated, as so many are today, and no matter where the company relocated within the UK it would be able to retain it’s existing number and simply point it to a new line. Based on this, another clear and over whelming benefit was the associated cost savings from just advertising and stationary alone. As just advertising an 0870 number instead of the local STD geographic number where the company was based, the business would then never have a need to ever change fax numbers again - even if it did decide to relocate. And so it was, those companies who did continue to use their geographic fax number suffered additional costs every time they relocated and moved to new offices, as the geographic numbers could not be moved away from the local exchange.

However as the UK Telecom market was deregulated and became more competitive the actual cost of making a phone call, sending a fax fell quite considerably. Then with the introduction of pre-paid calling cards and VoIP solutions such as Skype etc most call rate plans dropped in price to the point whereby you can call almost anywhere in the world for just a few pence a minute. And as you know Skype to Skype is completely free of charge.

Initially everything was going smoothly and there were no consumer complaints or signs of protest as the related call costs were inexpensive, and the benefits still outweighed any possible pitfalls. That is until the telephone companies who had access to this mass pool of 0870 numbers started giving them away to companies so that nearly every company was operating in some way using an 0870 number for their holiday reservations line or customer support orders line and so the 0870 number was no longer being used for the right reason.

As businesses and more alarmingly various government bodies started to use the 0870 numbers to gain significant rev-share income from the volumes of traffic their numbers were already generating. This would help reap them real financial rewards if 0870 numbers were adopted. Based on the size of any potential return some less desirable companies even adopted bad work practices in order to improve the rev-share kickbacks by keeping callers in a queue for unacceptable lengths of time. We’ve all experienced this at some point and even seen it on the BBC’s Watchdog programme.

So the abuse of the 0870 numbers began, as did the consumer complaints and protests about companies using the 0870 numbers. After all we’ve all heard of http://www.saynoto0870.com

Based on the consumer storm an in-depth enquiry was held by Ofcom (The UK Telco Regulatory body) and so from midnight on July 31st 2009 the cost of calling an 0870 number will decrease significantly. The current call costs are charged at 7.74p per minute (Peak Call & VAT Included), from 1 August 2009 this will cost approx. just 1p-2p per minute. As also, by law the cost of calling an 0870 number must cost no more than the cost of calling another landline. Therefore companies that operate a 0870 number will bow have to pay to receive their own 0870 calls – instead of having their rev-share payouts for having the number. Because of the fast approaching changes many companies are planning to move away from 0870 numbers to the lower priced 0844 numbers. So if you currently have an 0870 number, and do not want to pay a per minute charge from next month then you would be sensible to purchase an 0844 fax number instead. For more detailed information on these changes please visit:

http://www.ofcom.org.uk/consult/condocs/0870calls/0870statement/
http://www.phonepayplus.org.uk/output/default.aspx