Are all premium phone numbers being abolished from 1st December?

No. Premium rate numbers are not being abolished and the numbers that are being phased out are not premium rate.

Irish premium rate numbers start with prefixes beginning with 15. For example 1550 or 1580 and so on.

Back in the early 1990s, when calls were charged at about 35 cents per min (in modern terms) to call between say Dublin and Cork, there was a demand for numbers that were charged at lower rates for business help lines and so on. So, Telecom Eireann rolled out 1850 (charged at one unit untimed like old local calls) 1890 (charged as a timed local call) and 0818 (charged at national long distance rate). The difference between the per minute rate the customer paid and the full charge was picked up by the company you were calling.

The cost of calls plummeted since the market was liberalised and most of us do not pay per minute for calls. We've all got bundles of minutes are entirely flat rate calls at this stage.

The mobile networks and landline operators, rather sneakily, excluded those reduced rate numbers from their landline minute bundles, charging people crazy per minute rates based on old 1990s charging. So you rang 1890 XXX XXX at 'local rate' and got charged something like 20c per minute on your mobile.

076 was then launched as a special VoIP area code to be used for VoIP based phone services. That's become a bit irrelevant as everything is moving to VoIP anyway nowadays and it never saw much uptake. For some reason (mostly price gouging) the operators almost always excluded that from your landline and mobile bundle too. That was never how it was intended.

Anyway, what's happening is they're simplifying things.

This year 1850, 1890, 0818 and 076 will be charged as if they're regular landlines. So you will be paying as if you're calling 021 or 01 etc and they'll come out of your normal minute bundles.

Then on 1 January 2022 they will close 1850, 1890 and 076 entirely. They have to give companies time to move to new numbers on 0818, 1800 or just regular landline numbers.

So after that you'll just have two codes:

1800 XXX XXX - free of charge.
0818 XXX XXX - charged as a landline call (and charged within your bundled minutes).

It's long overdue and way more transparent and easy to understand.

There's still a need for non geographic, easy to remember numbers for businesses who don't want to have different numbers for different areas, so both of those codes will remain in use for a long time to come.

As for 118 XX directory assistance. I think those numbers should be required to play a warning of how much they're charging before the call is connected at all. I'd say though the use case for them is hardly there at all anymore with internet access on smartphones in most people's pockets, so they're really increasingly just services for people who can't use the internet and should probably morph into socially provided services.

This is it wrote: »

I'm not sure that directory enquires are affected by the new regulations. Have you any links?

If you mean 118 numbers, they are not affected. Does anybody still use them?

Just got the same text

Ian010 wrote: »

With less than three weeks to go, still nothing from Lycamobile, Post Mobile, Magnet, BT Ireland or Imagine.

Also nothing from ACN, APTUS, GoMo, Hive, IFA Telecom, PermaNet, RippleCom or WorldLink.

Why the fixation with it being announced? The rule change comes in regardless.