The registration windows for both are fairly identical. Are they the same company?

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If 18866, 1899, 18185, dialwise and dialaround are really all part of Finarea then why does only http://www.dialaround.co.uk offer 0870 calls at 5p per minute in the weekday daytime on their 0870 number?

Surely if they all had access to the same call routing methods then 18866 and 1899 would also be only too delighted to offer the 5p per minute 0870 rate?

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Out of curiosity where did you get that info because a RIPE IP search showed the IP address is registered to Fasthosts Internet Limited, Suite 7, Discovery Court, 154 Southgate Street, Gloucester, GL1 2EX.

Nothing on the WhoIs query revealed a switzerland location.

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http://order.internic.co.uk shows that http://call18866.co.uk is indeed registered to Finarea SA of Lugano in Switzerland but http://call18866.com is registered to Melbourne IT Ltd, a domain name specialist, but it still points to the same website.  http://www.18866.co.uk is registered to Finarea but http://www.18866.com is registered to Melbourne IT.   Again they all point to the same site.

http://www.1899.com is registered by The Registry at Info Avenue and points to 1899s site, whereas http://www.1899.co.uk is registered to an I Ramirez of 8 Liverpool St of Ealing, London W5 - this address does not point to a live website and Mr Ramirez seems to have failed in his effort to make a killing on this one.  http://Call1899.co.uk is interestingly also registered to Finarea of Lugano, Switzerland, but http://www.1899.com is registered to Network Solutions LLC and yet both point to the 1899 site

http://www.18185.co.uk is also registered to Finarea SA, again in Lugano but at a PO box number that differs from other Finarea addresses.  It was first registered on 20th March 2002 and renewed on 20th March 2006, so strange they held it for so long without launching the product.  http://www.18185.com and http://www.18185.net are both pointing at Japanese websites that are unreadable to me but clearly nothing to do with Finarea or 18185.  http://www.call18185.co.uk was first registered to Finarea on 6th Dec 2002, whereas http://call18185.com was also first registered on 6th Dec 2002 but to Melbourne IT.  There seems to be a pattern developing here.

http://www.dialaround.co.uk is again registered to Finarea SA at the Viale Carlo Cattanea 1 in Lugano as with various other above registrations.  It was first registered on 8th Oct 2003 though.  Other Dialaround name variants do not point to the Dialaround site.  So anyhow Dialaround really is linked in with Finarea (its web site presentation is very different to 1899 and 18866 and 18185 and it also uses NGNs instead of a dial prefix) and yet they can offer 5p per minute to 0870 and 18185 4p per minute but 18866 and 1899 stick to 9p per minute.  That makes no sense.

http://www.dialwise.co.uk is again registered to Finarea SA at the good old Viale Carlo Cattaneo 1 in Lugano and was first registered on 8th Oct 2003. No other dialwise www variants point to this website.

http://www.telesavers.co.uk is also registered to good old Finarea SA at the Viale Carlo Cattaneo 1 in Lugano.  It was first registered on 8th Oct 2003 like 18185.co.uk which is interesting.  It also has access to the 5p 0870 rate offered by dialaround but not by Finarea's prefix brands.  No other telesavers www variants point to this website

Call18866, Dialwise and Telesavers are also all linked with Finarea at http://www.magsys.co.uk/telecom/opnotes.htm but only the entry for Call18866 shows the link with Connect Telecom.  The Companies House website shows a Connect Telecom Ltd in Manchester created in 1997 and now in liquidation - not seemingly the one.  It also shows a Connect Telecommunications Ltd of Cumbernauld, Glasgow with Full accounts Exemption so unlikely to be the one given the scale of the Finarea uk telecoms business.  Then finally it shows Connect Telecom UK Ltd of 12 Sheet Street, Windsor, Berkshire.  The previous name of this company is Web.Coms Ltd until 2001.  Looks very promising to me and Windsor is close to my mother's home.  Must investigate.

But the Ofcom website shows a listing for Connect Telecom UK Ltd, PO Box 44714, London
SW1Y 4XD, Tel: 0845 056 1237
Provision of international simple voice resale services
There is no Ofcom listing for Finarea.

In short the Finarea telecoms web is a complex one and also involves Connect Telecom as a middle man.  As to why some of the www addresses are done through domain registering middlemen instead of direct to Finarea I suppose that's anyone's guess.

Interesting though to finally confirm all these sites are one operation.  I don't believe there are in fact any franchises involved and having 6 brands and 2 different calling formats is obviously an attempt to maximise the calling business against the extensive competition.  So no doubt 18866 will be losing absolutely no sleep at all over me cancelling my account with them due to their hiding their connection charge increase from 2p to 3p.  The fact that I am now only using 1899.com will clearly not be bothering them one little bit!

Thanks for all that.

Using RIPE (link in my previous post) only listed the Registrant's Agent and that is why I got Fasthosts Internet Limited, but obviously your WhoIs search displays the original registrant of Finarea SA.  I confirmed this by using yet another different company for WhoIs (there are so many) called www.UWhoIs.com which did list Finarea SA as the registrant and also Fasthosts as the agent that registered it for them.

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I thought all telecom companies had to be registered with OfCOM?

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Surely you mean procrastinate?

Now this is an art in which they are past masters.