International premium rate service (IPRS) refers to internationally available telephone-based premium services. It is analogous to "900" or "976" numbers in North America, which always incur a recipient-defined charge in excess of regular call charges. Internationally, this service has been allocated country code +979. IPRS numbers are known as UIPRNs.
The ITU recommendation for IPRS defines four charge categories, across which the +979 numbering space is divided:
| Range | Charge band | Designation |
|---|---|---|
| +979 1 | 1 | "High" |
| +979 3 | 2 | "Medium" |
| +979 5 | 3 | "Low" |
| +979 9 | Special | "Special" |
UIPRNs are only available to premium service providers who will provide their service to more than one country.
The format of the numbers will be 979 a bcdefghi, where the a digit, 1, 3, 5 or 9, will indicate the charging band, and the remaining digits will be the IPRS subscriber's number. 1, 3 and 5 indicate charge bands 1, 2 and 3, respectively, while 9 will indicate a special charge band.
The service is not yet known to be active. Once it is activated, it may not be available from every country, even though there is minimal or no cost to the receiving customer, as interchange rates would need to be negotiated for countries to allow origination of calls.
Famous quotes containing the words premium, rate and/or service:
“In taking out an insurance policy one pays for it in dollars and cents, always at liberty to discontinue payments. If, however, woman’s premium is a husband, she pays for it with her name, her privacy, her self-respect, her very life, “until death doth part.””
—Emma Goldman (1869–1940)
“As a novelist, I cannot occupy myself with “characters,” or at any rate central ones, who lack panache, in one or another sense, who would be incapable of a major action or a major passion, or who have not a touch of the ambiguity, the ultimate unaccountability, the enlarging mistiness of persons “in history.” History, as more austerely I now know it, is not romantic. But I am.”
—Elizabeth Bowen (1899–1973)
“Old books that have ceased to be of service should no more be abandoned than should old friends who have ceased to give pleasure.”
—Peregrine, Sir Worsthorne (b. 1923)