Re: 070 scam magnets
Too right... The stupid thing is, their last reorganisation (the 01 geographic prefix etc - which arrived shortly after everyone had had their business cards reprinted to change their 01 London number to 071/081 requiring them to head to the printers again to get 0171/0181 instead) was supposed to clear up just this kind of mess. Mobiles started 08, and so did a lot of premium rate numbers like the infamous 0898. So mobiles and pagers got 07... Unfortunately they defined this not as "mobile phones" but "mobile services", which allowed 070 through the door. Not an issue, but they also allowed the cost of 070 to vary wildly!
I really don't know what they were thinking, or if they were thinking at all.
At the time I was working for a company that, amongst other things, did telephone call logging, so keeping our charging structure database up to date really revealed what a complete mess it quickly became.
Hopefully this time they will show some sense... Then again, if they had any sense wouldn't they have a structure that indicated the level of rip-off the particular charging model is?
090nn - Under 10p a min
091nn - 10 - 19p a min
092nn - 20 - 29p a min
etc etc. You could even use the next digit to indicate the price to the pence level.
Seriously greedy rates can be bundled up at 099nn, which nobody in their right mind would ever call. Then again, x-factor viewers are clearly not in their right mind.
What does worry me already is that their proposed numbering scheme already shows gaps in the 08nn range, and you know what happens to gaps in numbering scheme? Someone sticks something in there without much thought and planning, which is exactly how the variable charging 070 range came to look like a mobile.
Fail? Because the 01 geographic location prefix and 07 mobile prefix were supposed to clear up the mess and confusion, and here they are trying to clear up the mess and confusion they created with that!
Oh well, with luck someone will invent a business card with wireless enabled dynamic ink and we'll be able to keep them up to date via an RSS feed.