End of line for rip-off ‘lo-call’ numbers
THE telecoms watchdog announced yesterday it is to scrap the so-called ‘lo-call’ numbers 1850 and 1890, and 076 numbers.
The dialling codes are often unavoidable for most phone users – and can prove extortionately expensive.
Sometimes when looking for help from your bank or a travel timetable, they’re the only number available but the bill for calling them from a mobile phone can be prohibitive.
Campaigners have fought against them for years, and now the communications regulator ComReg has announced the numbers – known as NGNs or non-geographic numbers – are finally to be scrapped within the next three years.
Activists have even set-up websites giving alternative landline numbers, so callers can avoid dialling the numbers which can be very prohibitively expensive.
ComReg said: ‘There is also a negative impact on the many organisations which use NGNs to provide services.’
ComReg plans to reduce the number of NGN types from five – 1800, 1850, 1890, 0818 and 076 – to two over the next three years. These will be 1800 and 0818.
It is mostly mobile-phone users who are stung with expensive charges when dialling the numbers.
The website saynoto1890.com gives an alphabetical list of alternative landline numbers to scores of 1890 and 1850 numbers so people can avoid them.
‘Irish consumers are needlessly paying out up to €5 a time to call “low cost” telephone numbers like those beginning 1890 – even though they could get the calls for next to nothing.
‘This is because many organisations and businesses are encouraging their customers to ring their LoCall 1890, or 1850 Callsave, or 0818 National Call telephone numbers at local call rates costing 4.9c a minute in the daytime and 1.26c off-peak.
‘But popular mobile and landline phone deals with inclusive minutes exclude calls to LoCall 1890 numbers, Callsave 1850 and national 0818 calls from their minute bundles,’ the site explains.
ComReg said: ‘Retail tariffs for NGN calls are not sufficiently transparent and consumers often do not know, or are unable to estimate, the likely cost of a call to an NGN. Many... do not understand the differences between the five classes of NGNs; and retail tariffs for NGN calls can be high, particularly for NGN calls made from mobile phones.’