Wow, great forum, lots of really useful information - and a lot of anxiety directed at communications providers. Can we give you some good news from this side of the fence? (About time, no?)

It seems to us that much of the frustration, anger and justifiable outrage about calls to 08 numbers is due to the ride which the mobile operators (MNOs) have had. Call charges of up to £2 per minute for 0871 and 60p per minute for freephone 0800 are outrageous and this type of abuse has given the whole industry a bad name. I know almost everybody reading this will know, but, for the avoidance of doubt, you must appreciate that the MNOs not passing any revenue to us or the organisations publishing 08 numbers.

Now the good news!

Zimo Communications – yes, we’re a villainous communications provider too – has launched an 03 conferencing service this week. We won’t patronise “Say no to 0870” visitors by explaining too much about 03 numbers – we suspect you understand them very well. Suffice to say, you can dial in to 03TALK and conference at 01/02 call charges – even from your mobile.

Find out more at http://03TALK.com or by calling 0330 330 0330 (Option 3). There’ll be no nasty surprise on your next phone bill – we promise.

Thanks for the posting Lee. Welcome to the forum.

You will understand the inevitable resentment that arises from the fact that companies such as Zimo earn money from the public misunderstanding about the cost of calling 084 numbers and the fact that higher costs arise from the income or subsidy derived by the person called. Yes, the MNO's profiteer on top, but that is not the whole story. The extent to which any individual company is responsible for promoting, rather than simply exploiting, this misunderstanding is arguable - the comments on the numberstore website are moderate when compared with some.

As you brace yourself for the torrent of abuse in this thread, I salute your bravery and wish you well with 03Talk. Perhaps you could confirm that the "free" service is based on the O'Leary theory that you can give the basic service away and make the money on the extras. Members of this forum are highly (and rightly) distrusting of anything that looks "too good to be true" and are likely to assume that the catch is even more sinister than it actually may be.

SilentCallsVictim,

Thanks for your welcome to the forum. Greatly appreciated.

I can confirm that whilst 03TALK may look "too good to be true", the service really is as described. You can find out more on the FAQ page of 03TALK, but I’m more than happy to answer your questions here too.

The model you describe of giving away a basic service and charging for the extras is not really the one on which 03TALK is predicated. Let me explain. Even though calls to 03 are treated in exactly the same way as calls to 01/02 numbers from the callers' perspective (same price from whatever network, included in bundled minutes, etc), the out-payment which we receive from BT (0.54ppm daytime, 0.24ppm evening and 0.18ppm weekend) is 0.27ppm more than that received for calls to 01/02 numbers. This information is also public domain.

This means that with a conference call to an 03 number - for which you will pay the same price as a geographic call, regardless of the network from which you’re dialling - there is enough margin to operate the service with no additional cost to the conference participants. That said, as a well-established telecoms operator with existing capacity and infrastructure, we have been able to absorb some of the development and operating costs, and though it is a very slim margin - a sliver in fact - it's enough to make the service entirely viable for us.

You are absolutely correct - and we do explain on the website - that we also plan to introduce advanced features for those who require them (often described nowadays as a freemium service like Skype). These will be on a paid basis and will enhance the 03TALK basic service. We're not keen on the term "basic" which for us implies "stripped down". The 03TALK "basic" service allows up to 10 conference participants, it provides a facility to set up five calls per day and the call log-in details will persist for a week (so you can use any of the five conferences you have set up for up to seven days). You can revisit the website to instantly set up another conference at any time free of charge or do this via the access number 0330 330 0330 (Option 2). You can notify conference delegates via email directly from the website. All of this is provided at NO cost from Zimo / 03TALK. The only charge you'll have is the cost of the call - which, as we've established is the same price as a call to an 01/02 number regardless of whether you're calling from a landline or mobile.

The enhanced feature plans will also be operated on 0330 330 0330 meaning there's no additional charge for the conference participants. Only the conference host will pay for these and only if they're required. These will include conference call recording with facilities to distribute the audio from the call to all delegates, notification via SMS, Twitter, IM, greater numbers of delegates, recurring conferences, automatic login (no IVR) based upon callers' CLI. They're all very powerful, but "nice to have" and that's why they're charged only to those who require them. There are additional costs for us in delivering these services, but we don’t want callers and conference organisers who do not require them to subsidise those who do.

So to conclude, the service comes with NO catch. It's described in detail on the website, but should any SayNoTo0870 users have any questions at all, please don't hesitate to contact a member of the 03TALK team on 0330 330 3366 (you know the cost of the call!)

LeeConnolly wrote on Nov 17^th, 2009 at 11:11am:

Even though calls to 03 are treated in exactly the same way as calls to 01/02 numbers from the callers' perspective (same price from whatever network, included in bundled minutes, etc), the out-payment which we receive from BT (0.54ppm daytime, 0.24ppm evening and 0.18ppm weekend) is 0.27ppm more than that received for calls to 01/02 numbers. This information is also public domain.

Now that's an interesting page.  Annex A spreadsheet, for any other visitors, is the one with the outpayments in it.   And I thought it was good that I can receive calls for free!  Seems I could be paid for receiving them ...
Now to go read the rest of the documents ...!