Premium rate phone-in saga: ITV Play Channel Axed

Does anyone else use 0500 apart from Five Live? I dont remember seeing it used for anything else.

Do you think Brainteaser will return?

Crimewatch (0500 600 600)

Wasn't 0500 the first lot of freephone numbers? 0800 is more common but I think the new freefone number is 0808 ?

Oddly enough where as BT have changed every number when the phone code has changed (01==>071/081==>0171/0181==>0208/0207/0203*) 0500 & 0800 both still remain even though there is a new code.

* 0203 is the new London code used for both inner & outer London along side 0207 (inner) & 0208 (outer London)

I hope they can sort out all this before the Eurovision Song Contest... if they rig that vote we'll all be doomed and Eurovision will be taken as a laughing stock

didn't the 0500 / 0800 phone number differences come about because of the companies which suppied them?

Cable and Wireless operated 0500, and BT did the 0800 lines.

Or did I dream that?

Originally the 0500 numbers were operated by Mercury. Virgin Radio used to have one - I believe they then changed it to a BT 0800 number and now use a national rate 0870 number.

Children's Channel Nickelodeon used to have 0800 numbers, for their live studio bits but IIRC in recent years these were changed to 0870 to "make it easier for viewers to get through"...

Sadly alot of firms have changed from 0500/0800 or local numbers to 0870

That was Watch Your Own Wednesday/Week, they used to have three phonelines that would open for ten minutes per half an hour so viewers could select their own show, all three numbers were 0800, I admit I used to phone this alot, well it was free, but most of the time you couldn't get through.

Then the 0870 number was brought in to 'make it easier to get through' as you say James.

0800's been around since well before BT was privatised in the early 1980s. 0500 was given to what was then Mercury Communications after BT was privatised in 1982. Mercury Communications later morphed into Cable & Wireless and was eventually partly purchased by NTL.

0808 is a relatively new free number and was primarily introduced with the rise of unmetered internet dial-up access as there wasn't enough numbers to go round as the number of providers sprang up.

The range 0808 1570xxx is set aside for fictitious uses in TV and radio, in much the same way 01632 is used in TV programmes. Additionally, numbers in the range 0808 80xxxxx are reserved for not-for-profit helplines. Since Orange UK introduced charges for dialling freephone numbers in December 2005, all British mobile networks now charge for calls to freephone numbers, with certain limited exemptions (notably Childline).

I like that we have a whole range of numbers set aside for fictional use..

I assume therefore if you dial them you get an engaged tone - or message telling you the number doesn't exist.


Or do the TV companies charged you £1.50 a second and have we unearthed another element of the premium rate scandal?