My son at Loughborough Uni has managed to find his geographical number for us to contact him as opposed to his allocated 0870 number.  I had tried in vain to try and find a geographical alternative to my daughter's 0870 number at Leicester Uni.  My son managed to sort it out and gave me her number as follows: 0116005****.  I have tried to contact her from my landline and the message I get is that 'the number you have dialled has not been recognised' as soon as the '5' is dialled, but I can get through when I dial from my mobile!!!  Can anybody explain this please?

This topic has been talked about on this thread:
http://www.saynoto0870.com/cgi-bin/forum/YaBB.cgi?board=news;action=display;num=1090685614

wrote on Oct 20^th, 2004 at 9:00pm:

My son at Loughborough Uni has managed to find his geographical number for us to contact him as opposed to his allocated 0870 number.

Could you add this number to the site please?

The Leicester number is there, but unfortunately it doesn't work from most phones. But it might be worth a try hassling BT about it. The geographical number for the Opal Court accommodation in Leicester works fine, though.

Out of interest, where did your son find your daughter's 0116 number? Was it from this site? If not, he must have called it successfully from somewhere. Do you know where he called from?

Dave, I am aware of the other thread - I started this one because I have tried to contact my daughter at Leicester Uni Halls from my landline to her geographical number, and the message I get is that 'the number you have dialled has not been recognised' as soon as the '5' is dialled, but I can get through when I dial from my mobile!!!  This is what I don't understand and wonder if anyone can explain!

Which network is your mobile on? Is it Orange?

Normally, local phone numbers can't begin with a 0 or a 1, because 0 means you are dialling an STD code, and 1 is reserved for special services such as directory enquiries. As you can dial numbers locally without the STD code, these local numbers can't start with a 0 or 1.

The result of this is that there are millions of numbers that can't be used. In Leicester, that means all the numbers 0116 0xx xxxx and 0116 1xx xxxx. On the Ofcom site, these are termed "national dialling only" numbers, meaning that you have to dial the full number, including the STD code, even if you are in the same area. Because this would confuse people, these numbers are only intended for internal use - e.g. as the number that an 0870 number connects to. The end user shouldn't ever need to dial these numbers.

Having said that, there's no reason why customers shouldn't call those numbers directly, as long as they add the STD code. But for some reason BT blocks these numbers (see the other thread for a discussion...)

People have discovered that the Leicester halls numbers can be dialled from NTL phones (NTL being the operator of the halls system) and from Orange mobile phones (calls from which are apparently routed via NTL's network). So if your mobile is on a network other than Orange, we've discovered something new!

I hope that explains why you can't dial the number from your landline!

wrote on Oct 22^nd, 2004 at 9:39am:

Having said that, there's no reason why customers shouldn't call those numbers directly, as long as they add the STD code. But for some reason BT blocks these numbers (see the other thread for a discussion...) People have discovered that the Leicester halls numbers can be dialled from NTL phones (NTL being the operator of the halls system) and from Orange mobile phones (calls from which are apparently routed via NTL's network).

I wonder why BT should block access to those number ranges though - the only beneficiary can be NTL.

Having said that, if NTL and Orange users can dial in to the geographic numbers, would users of a prefix system (18866, 1899 etc.) also be able to?

wrote on Oct 22^nd, 2004 at 10:04am:

Having said that, if NTL and Orange users can dial in to the geographic numbers, would users of a prefix system (18866, 1899 etc.) also be able to?

I think people have already tried that, and they couldn't get through.

For me, the goal of finding a geographical number is to take advantage of the unmetered calls that are part of "BT Together".