[/color]

Yes, I remember the dark days of the internet, when you had to pay a monthly fee, plus phone call costs to access the internet.  Then freeserve came in and people followed by not paying the monthly fee.  Then came a few brave companies, many of whom went bust or lost loads of money, just to gain a few customers, and give free calls to the net, for a monthly fee.

However the thing to remember with this is the internet started off at a high price, and gradually came down as time went by.

The same campaign also got telecoms companies to give unmetered telephone calls, which is not commonplace with BT and it's rivals.

However the difference between this campaign and 0870, is that 0870 was recently introduced to replace a system where you could call a company on their geographic location, a system that has worked fine since the telephone has been around.

Some companies argue that having NG numbers makes it easier to handle calls, in the same way that having PO BOX addresses makes it easier to handle their mail, but Royal Mail doesn't insist on having to put 3 stamps on a letter to PO BOX addresses, and split the profits.  A company pays Royal Mail for the privilege of a PO BOX address this cost is considered worth it, if it makes handing mail easier.

If we could call a new system of geographic numbers, ie 0200, which would be a London code, then they would cost exactly the same as calling a normal London number, or indeed any other geographic number, and the company you're calling would instead pay a monthly or yearly fee for the number, in the same way as they pay Royal Mail for PO BOX addresses.

The only difference would be they wouldn't actually make any money from it, but companies keep argueing, they don't use these numbers to make money, they use it to make things easier for us customers, so surely such a system won't cause any problems would it Banks, DVLA, and doctor's surgeries.