It may have slipped you by un-noticed but have a look at http://www.btsmartnumbers.com/index.html

The website is kinda crap to be honest, but it give you an idea of some of the new services that are up for sale to people who run call centers.

I've had some involvement with this stuff and I can confirm it works quite happy on geo and non geo number blocks.
This is all about the smart delivery & termination of calls based on any number of things (including call origin geographic location)

It was very interesting to see this new type of system.  I had a look at some of the case studies but not all and there didnt appear any Timescale defination of when, for instance Sainsbury piloted and then apparently rolled out.

I couldnt tell from any of the other case studies that I did look at ,if it had happened 2010/11/12 which would have been interesting, not that I ring MoD although it specified that it was operational during the Olympics but none of the others gave any indication.

How new is this baby?  and do they offer premium rate such as 0844 that GPs were over sold on, or only Call Plan acceptable numbers, like 03.

I may be dumb, or have not taken enough time to read an allegedly "kinda crap" description of the service, but could somebody please explain the relevance to this forum.

As I understand it, it offers flexibility in the ultimate termination point of a call, as an alternative to those which already exist. It could be thought that those who adopt this solution will be more inclined to seek subsidy from callers in order to meet the cost, or perhaps it is seen to reduce the need for non-geographic numbers because it may be cheaper than the present options for flexibility on geographic numbers.

To be fair however, I have not got a clue what I am talking about, so perhaps one of the previous posters could explain the relevance, for me and for others.

I'll try and do a better reply later once I have some more time;

The relevance of this is more for people who understand how the back-end of such call centers operate, how, why and when people are driven to use such services (often in conjunction with NGN's) It's also an example of what the PSTN can do without having to hide behind NGN's and use that as an excuse.

Smart numbers have been about for a while (Maybe a year or more to certain customers as stated with regard to the Olympic stuff.) I can't say about any of the other case studies on the site as I've not been involved in any of those ones directly. What I have been working on only went live in the past couple of weeks.

Smart numbers also superceeds what was the old BT switching plans (where certain customers could remap number blocks on the fly to any trunk)

My understanding of the service is that it will allow you to use any valid number at the head end and allow you to route your calls based on many factors (like geographic location, mobile or fixed line etc) All the things NGN providers sell you now on an 08 & 03 numbers)

This service bundles up a lot of other bits as 1 package for people to buy into. We have always had geographic information based on call origin (Pizza Hut national number, or NHSD for example) and switching/re-mapping plans have always existed.

Q wrote on Mar 2^nd, 2013 at 4:47pm:

I'll try and do a better reply later once I have some more time;

Thanks for what you have given already.

Since 03 has been available we have no need to get into the functional reasons for using a particular type of number. We can say, quite simply, that if you want to utilise the features of a non-geographic number, then you either use a 03 number or declare and explain the imposition of a "Service Charge" - there is no need to get into the functional issues.

Although not directly related to the key campaigning focus (as given by the extended title of this site - "… and other rip-off numbers"), this is of passing interest to many followers of the forum and those of us who either fear, or may be excited by, the indirect consequences, as suggested in my previous post.


There are two hanging questions, which bear on these consequences:

Would a user of this feature be inclined, or even encouraged, to use a 084/087/09 number, so as to fund it at the expense of callers?

Would a natural user of a geographic number be inclined, or encouraged, to retain their number and achieve flexible routing through use of this feature, as a cheaper alternative against switching to a non-geographic number?

These may be mutually exclusive, but perhaps not.


Two further questions, as matters of interest.

The service is described as being offered to "large organisations across public and private sector". What would be the minimum entry level?

Are BT's competitors in this market (e.g. C&W) offering similar services?