Inbound telephone numbers have got a bad reputation with the general public in recent years due to the call charges incurred by some types of numbers.  Inbound numbers (also known as Non-Geographic Numbers and Number Translation Services) are used by hundreds of thousands of businesses across the country but call charges vary depending on which type of number is used.

Inbound numbers are popular with businesses because of the advanced, behind the scene functionality which they offer.  Calls from an inbound number can be routed to a single number or many. For instance, a call routing plan can be setup on an inbound number to divert calls when a call centre is busy. If another call centre can handle more calls, the percentage of calls they receive can be adjusted accordingly. In the event that one call centre goes down due to a line fault, calls can be immediately re-routed using a disaster recovery call routing plan. If a business offers multi-lingual customer service an auto attendant can be set up to route calls to the correct team wherever they are based. In conjunction with the inbound number, features such as call queuing, messages on hold and voicemail can be set up at network level without a business having to invest large sums of money on a call centre ready phone system.

The most well known inbound number type is 0800 and the caller pays nothing to make a call to a 0800 number as the call charges are billed to the owner of the number. A caller dialling a 0845 number will be charged. 0845 numbers have been marketed as local rate numbers in the past which is wrong. This may have been the case when a local call cost 3.36 pence per minute plus VAT but the cost of calling a local telephone number has decreased substantially over the past few years whilst the cost to call 0845 numbers has remained static meaning that calling an 0845 number local rate is misleading.  

The same goes for 0870 numbers which were previously marketed as national rate numbers. You will incur a charge of up to 6.73 pence per minute plus VAT if you call one of these numbers which is incredibly expensive if you compare how much it costs to make an ordinary national call even with BT. As a result, the margins made by the inbound number operators allowed them to share revenue with the number owners making them a very effective revenue generator for both the networks and the number owners.

Ofcom (the UK governing body) has now abolished revenue share on some types of numbers and they are currently reviewing the inbound number market with a view to simplifying the numbering plan and reclassifying some number types as premium rate. As part of this process Ofcom have also released new inbound number ranges such as 0871, 0844 and 03 numbers. An innovative service which has recently come to market is AreaCall. AreaCall numbers allow you to choose a local number anywhere in the country without the number being tied to a fixed telephone line. Calls can be diverted to any other number meaning that you expand your local business presence anywhere in the UK without having to have a physical presence.