999 is an official emergency telephone number in a number of countries which allows the caller to contact emergency services for urgent assistance. Countries and territories using the number include Bahrain, Bangladesh, Botswana, Eswatini, Ghana, Guernsey, Hong Kong, Ireland, Isle of Man, Jersey, Kenya, Macau, Malaysia, Mauritius, Poland, Qatar, Sudan, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, Trinidad and Tobago, Seychelles, Uganda, the United Arab Emirates, the United Kingdom, and Zimbabwe.
Premium-rate telephone numbers are telephone numbers that charge callers higher price rates for select services, including information and entertainment. A portion of the call fees is paid to the service provider, allowing premium calls to be an additional source of revenue for businesses. Tech support, psychic hotlines, and adult chat lines are among the most popular kinds of premium-rate phone services. Other services include directory enquiries, weather forecasts, competitions and ratings televoting. Diplomatic services, such as the US Embassy in London or the UK Embassy in Washington, have also charged premium rates for calls from the general public.
A toll-free telephone number or freephone number is a telephone number that is billed for all arriving calls. For the calling party, a call to a toll-free number from a landline is free of charge. A toll-free number is identified by a dialing prefix similar to an area code. The specific service access varies by country.
The Office of Communications, commonly known as Ofcom, is the government-approved regulatory and competition authority for the broadcasting, telecommunications and postal industries of the United Kingdom.
In telecommunications, directory assistance or directory inquiries is a phone service used to find out a specific telephone number and/or address of a residence, business, or government entity.
Telephone numbers in the United Kingdom are administered by the Office of Communications (Ofcom). For this purpose, Ofcom established a telephone numbering plan, known as the National Telephone Numbering Plan, which is the system for assigning telephone numbers to subscriber stations.
In Argentina, area codes are two, three, or four digits long. Local customer numbers are six to eight figures long. The total number of digits is ten, for example, phone number (11) 1234-5678 for Buenos Aires is made up of a 2-digit area code number and an 8-digit subscriber's number, while (383) 123-4567 would be an example of a Catamarca number.
The Big Number Change addressed various issues with the telephone dialling plan in the United Kingdom, during the late-1990s and early-2000s.
Numbers on the Irish telephone numbering plan are regulated and assigned to operators by ComReg.
118 118 is the UK telephone number for a US owned directory enquiries provider. Once wildly popular for its advertising featuring two runners, the service has experienced a dramatic decline in calls due to easily accessible information via mobile devices. Calls are answered from call centres in the Philippines, with some administration in Cardiff, Wales and other management offices in London that provides telephone numbers, given subscriber name and address, and answers general questions on any subject. 118 118 started operation in December 2002. In September 2013 the company started 118118Money, a provider of unsecured personal loans.
Widespread UK telephone code misconceptions, in particular brought on by the Big Number Change in 2000, have been reported by regulator Ofcom since publication of a report it commissioned in 2004.
The dialling plan for mobile networks and new landline operators is closed; all subscriber numbers must be dialled in full. For landline numbers starting with 02, the dialling plan used to be open; the trunk digit and area code could be omitted if the caller was in the same area code as the callee. However, starting May 3, 2008, all landline numbers must be dialled in full.
Call-through telecom companies are alternative telecommunications companies in Europe that provide services to make inexpensive international phone calls. All a user needs to do to take advantage of these savings is to dial the call-through access number followed by the destination number. Different phone companies specializes in a different types of international phone call deals, which means that the cheap long-distance call plan that works for one country won't necessarily work for another. Most call-through telecom companies charge different telephone call prices at different times of day for local and national calls while others offer really cheap international phone calls.
A non-geographic number is a type of telephone number that is not linked to any specific locality. Such numbers are an alternative to the traditional 'landline' numbers that are assigned geographically using a system of location-specific area codes. Non-geographic numbers are used for various reasons, from providing flexible routing of incoming phone calls to generating revenue for paid-for services.
PhONEday was a change to the telephone dialling plan in the United Kingdom on 16 April 1995. It changed geographic area codes and some telephone numbers. In most areas, a "1" was added to the dialling code after the initial zero. In Bristol, Leeds, Leicester, Nottingham and Sheffield, the area codes were replaced with new codes and the subscriber numbers gained an extra digit. The PhONEday changes also made provision for new ranges of subscriber numbers in those five cities. A £16m advertising campaign, and an eight-month period of parallel running during which old and new codes were active, preceded the change. PhONEday followed a change made in May 1990, when the old London area code 01 had been released from use, permitting all United Kingdom geographic numbers to begin with this prefix. Originally planned in 1991 to take place in 1994, in 1992 the change was postponed until the Easter Sunday bank holiday in 1995.
Telephone numbers in Estonia follow a closed telephone numbering plan.
Ranges for fictitious telephone numbers are common in most telephone numbering plans. One of the main reasons these ranges exist is to avoid accidentally using real phone numbers in movies and television programs because of viewers frequently calling the numbers used. In North America, the area served by the North American Numbering Plan (NANPA) system of area codes, fictitious telephone numbers are usually of the form (XXX) 555-xxxx. The use of 555 numbers in fiction, however, led a desire to assign some of them in the real world, and some of them are no longer suitable for use in fiction. Other areas have different fictitious telephone numbers.
101 is the police single non-emergency number (SNEN) in the United Kingdom (UK), which automatically connects the caller to their local police force, in a similar manner to the pre-existing 999 emergency number. The 101 service was created to ease pressure, and abuse of the existing 999 system. Hazel Blears, then a UK government minister in the Home Office, stated that the new system would "strengthen community engagement". In 2004, ten million 999 calls were made in the UK; however, 70% of those calls were deemed not to be an emergency.
Telephone numbers in the United Kingdom have a flexible structure that reflects their historical demands, starting from many independent companies through a nationalised near-monopoly, to a system that supports many different services, including cellular phones, which were not envisaged when the system was first built. Numbers evolved in a piecemeal fashion, with numbers initially allocated on an exchange-by-exchange basis for calls connected by manual operators. Subscriber numbers reflected demand in each area, with single digit telephone numbers in very rural areas and longer numbers in cities.
UK Calling is the name given to the legislation introduced by Ofcom in July 2015 to make the cost of calling UK service numbers clearer for everyone.
