How do 084x numbers work?

It’s been more than six months since I made my inaugural and only posting, so I thought I’d resurrect the blog with some questions and answers on the subject of revenue sharing phone numbers.

The first question is how do 084x numbers work? I explain below how all users of these numbers benefit financially from calls they receive.

Yes, you read correctly; all organisations that use 084x numbers benefit financially from their use. Some users may cite that they aren’t paid directly for calls made to their numbers, but they are no less off the hook.

How’s that so?

Let me dispel the myth that the issue with 084x numbers is simply solely about organisations grappling for revenue share payments. The process at the heart of all this and is what permits the revenue share payments and decreasing them or even turning them off has absolutely no effect on it.

Put simply, the amount of revenue coming out at the receiver’s end cannot be varied in order to affect the amount the caller pays.

It’s important to appreciate that the connection between the calling and receiving parties may span more than one telephone company, due to the parties being customers of different companies. Picture that connection as being two tin cans joined together with a piece of string, where the tin cans are the respective parties’ telcos.

The receiver’s telco levies a fee on the caller’s telco for every minute that the string (call) is connected between the two cans. For calls to 084x numbers, there is a surcharge attached.

Telephone companies that we make calls with take this premium into account when setting their prices. They pass it on to their customers (callers) in higher call rates. This is much the same as in the shops where retailers charge customers more for premium goods.

BT call rates are the exception to this as it is governed by regulation that keeps them very low. It is anticipated that this anomaly will be addressed by the regulator in the not too distant future.

Coming back to what happens when a call is made, at the receiving party's end of the chain (or the string in the analogy), the telephone company that operates the 084x number can offer its client service(s) as a result of this subsidy. In some cases it also results in an out-payment of revenue, which is essentially cash-back.

Thus, it is the choice of type of telephone number that determines the level of subsidy that the user wishes to derive from its customers and not some choice of whether it wishes to receive revenue payments directly or not.

What levels of subsidy do users of 084x numbers benefit from?

With 0845 numbers, it’s around a penny a minute and with 0844 numbers it is about 4 pence per minute for the most common type, known as “g6”, which are also the most expensive to call. These figures are approximations taken from information publically available on the BT Wholesale Carrier Price List, which contains the rates telephone companies are charged to interconnect with one another.

Since August 2009 there has been no subsidy available to users of 0870 numbers. When there was, however, it was about 6 pence per minute. Now we see why many of those users migrated to 0844 numbers or higher rate 0871 numbers!