Cheaper alternative to 1890 numbers

SpaceTime wrote: »

One of the issues is that there's often no geographic landline alternative these days.

In the relatively recent past special rate numbers basically all had to route calls to a 'real' geographic 01 or 021 or whatever landline number or range of numbers.

Technology has moved on enormously and what will usually happen these days is a 185X number will be sending calls to a VoIP SIP trunk straight into a call centre. Lines and numbers no longer feature in modern systems really.

0818 is adversltised as being 'national rate'. It shouldn't be legal for any provider to treat that any differently to calls to landlines outside your own area code. They're bundled and free normally.

Its also inexplicable that they're charging huge excesses for calls to 1850 and 1890 when they're advertised as 'local rate'.

The whole way people pay for calls has changed. For most of us 'local rate' is a total irrelevance. The billing either distinguishes landline vs mobile or just has a number of inclusive minutes for everything in the case of most modern mobile plans.

We should probably just have something like

0800 - freephone and diallable from abroad as +353 800 and charged as a normal call to Ireland.

And 0808 - national landline rate, which will be treated as a long distance landline call at all times. This could also be called as +353 808

If they wanted a third layer maybe 0809 charged at mobile rates might make sense for companies like taxies and others who might receive calls on mobiles or may not wish to cost share but want a special number.

The existing codes should be phased out of use over 24 months.

The current model is from 1980s and 1990s Telecom Éireann billing rates that nobody in their right mind is still paying and that made distinctions between local, up to 64km and more than 64 km..

It's nuts to be still using them in an era where the majority of calls come from mobiles using minute bundles and landlines that don't generally make any distinction between local and national anymore.

In fact, we probably no longer even need landline area codes anymore.

Make the whole thing 9-digit.

Dublin 01 999 9999 becomes 319 999 999 (03 is free and spare)

Cork 021 999 9999 becomes 219 999 999

Athlone 090 999 9999 becomes 909 999 999

Meanwhile mobiles would just all start with 8

08X 999 9999 becomes 8x9 999 999

Then you'd have more ability to not run out of local numbers as you'd be less tied down. You'd get rid of the whole obsolete confusion with dropping the 0 after the 353

And you could retain the old 0xx dialling system along side it for a couple of years for a gentle phase in because they don't clash at all thus minimising disruption and also solving Dublin's number shortages.

Northern Ireland did something like this as have many of the Nordic countries and also Spain.

Keep things simple and make the numbering more suitable for modern era needs where landlines will largely be irrelevant anyway in a few decades.

It'd also be nice if we just adopted the normal European ring tone. Then people wouldn't be able to tell when I'm on holidays