Fone Forum

Hi all,

It looks like OfCom has been sticking their oar into the market again and we have a few changes coming up.

First of all it seems that OfCom is going to lower the termination rate on 070 numbers to roughly match the termination rate for mobile numbers. Details at https://www.ofcom.org.uk/consultations-and-statements/category-1/review-070-number-range.

Secondly, it seems that OfCom intends to cap the service charge on 118 numbers to £3.10 for every 90 seconds of call, more details at https://www.ofcom.org.uk/consultations-and-statements/category-1/directory-enquiries-118-review.

OfCom decided against moving 070 numbers to the 06 range, which would have removed all ambiguity and made clear that they are not mobile numbers and yet now they are happy to decimate the market. Likewise, the "bill shock" caused by 118 numbers was entirely foreseeable and yet OfCom allowed it to happen before taking steps to control it.

I do think it was quite clever of 118118 to effectively use their ads for 118118 Money to increase brand awareness of their 118118 DQ service without actually having to publish the call cost.

Does anybody else remember when directory enquiries calls cost 20p?

Dave

Oh how dreadfully old you make me feel Dave!    :'(

Unless my memory is totally scrambled, I remember when they were free (inclusive in your line rental)!    :o

But the "trouble with nostalgia ----- is that ----- "things ain't what they used to be"!    :P

That's life, I guess?    :-\

Only 2 things are certain: death, and taxes!    ;)

But don't forget the entropy (ever increasing degree of chaos in a system) man!

You're right, they were at one time free. I seem to recall that when the 20p charge was introduced, 192 could still be called for free from a payphone for quite some time.

I've been trying to find what year the charge was introduced but I can't find anything definite, only that it was in the early 90's.

I referenced the 20p charge to show that there was once a time where DQ calls were charged but at a reasonable rate.

Thanks for confirming that I'm not totally bonkers Dave.

I originally intended to post that they were even free from a coin box, but I was unsure if that was my imagination running away with me!

I seem to remember that you could get to various destinations, including directory enquiries, by rapidly tapping the number on the handset rest in a pulse tone coin box, even without inserting any coins in it!  (I was age 6 or 7 at that time.)

Fond memories.

Now we are inundated with continual change - ostensibly for 'improvements' - but all that we end up with is complexities and chaos.

"Hey ho", said Piglet.

There have been a few things you could do with pay phones over the years. My favourite one was where a certain model of BT payphone allowed you to place a call as normal, then as long as you had at least 11p of credit left you could press the "follow on call" button, then dial 99* and your coin would be returned.

Another thing you could do with some models was dial the operator (100) with a DTMF dialler. This would put you through to them without the "cuckoo" tones sounding, so if the operator wasn't being otherwise alert, they would not realise you were calling from a payphone. This meant you could just ask them to connect a call for you.

As a random aside, there were also some randomly scattered 0800 numbers which connected to operator services but for some reason they did not know which number you were calling from. You would have expected they would refuse to do anything but in actual fact you could ask for a call to be connected and they would just ask which number you were calling from and then connect you.

That's enough for now :D