Non-geographic Telephone Numbers in The United Kingdom - Revenue Share and Call Price Indications

Revenue Share and Call Price Indications

For any telephone call to a non-geographic number, there are four parties involved: the caller, the Originating telco, the Terminating telco and the called party.

The caller pays their telephone bill to the Originating telco. The called party is supplied their non-geographic telephone number by the Terminating telco.

The Terminating telco will have applied to Ofcom for, and been allocated, various blocks of numbers within each of the various non-geographic number prefixes. Each 3-digit prefix is broken into a thousand blocks, with each block containing 10 000 numbers. Each block will have a specific revenue-share amount that applies, indicated by a tariff code such as g8, g11 or ff29.

Where revenue share takes place (i.e. 084, 087 and 09 numbers), the revenue share amount is broadly set by the choice of telephone number prefix and more finely grained by the actual telephone number. The called party has complete control over this choice when they pick a telephone number for their business from the available supply, e.g. 084 numbers (except 0845) allow revenue share of "up to 5 pence per minute or up to 5 pence per call", where 0844 477 is g6 or 4.255p/min, 0844 705 is g11 or 3.404p/min, 0844 728 is g8 or 0.851p/min, and 0844 642 is ff29 or 4.20p/call (not including VAT) and 087 numbers (except 0870) give a revenue share of "up to 10 pence per minute or up to 10 pence per call" with various choices as to the exact amount in a similar manner. 087 numbers (except 0870) are subject to additional regulation by PhonepayPlus.

The Terminating telco may share some of the received revenue-share "premium" directly with the called party, or may use those monies to offset the cost of providing telephone service to the called party.