Thanks Dave, I just realised.

Here is the universities "useful numbers page".
http://perseus.herts.ac.uk/uhinfo/index.cfm?DA3AB701-D37B-CAB6-EB04-B59098A79778

Heres the home page - http://perseus.herts.ac.uk/

I dont understand your last question.

Yes its keytalk I believe.

Damn.  Is that pretty much a definite?

Ok, thanks for trying mate.

Do you happen to know off the top of your head if an 0870 numbers is covered in BT together option 2? (Free weekend local and national calls).

See my suggestions in Post 2 of the below thread for ways to try to challenge this abuse.  Of course in this other case it was an 0871 at 10p per minute at all times but most of the issues are the same:-

http://www.saynoto0870.com/cgi-bin/forum/YaBB.cgi?board=test;action=display;num=...

You or your relative should also consider submitting a request to the university under the Freedom of Information Act 2000 asking for disclosure of the underlying geographic numbers that these 0870 numbers point to.

You should also ask for details of the revenue share received by the university on each call and/or whether the telecoms equipment and lines were installed by the phone company free if they were allowed to use ripoff 0870 numbers.  You should ask the university to reveal if their facilities/telecoms/acommodation manager examined the cost of these calls compared to normal numbers starting 01 and 02 and whether the phone supplier offered an option to provide 01/02 numbers if the university had paid something towards the cost of the installation.

Exeter is  my old University actually so its good to see they have steered clear of the 0870 scam.

They may also use Keycom as a telecoms supplier but I think they have probably agreed a different deal where geographic phone numbers are still used.

Clearly Keycom offered your university a normal geographic phone numbers deal too but your university decided to go for the scamming 0870 numbers because Keycom charged them less money for the telephone installation and ongoing maintenance etc, etc.

You may find this document of interest:-

http://www.ja.net/latest/news/2003/voicetraffic.html

You should submit an FOI request to your University asking for full details of the proposals submitted by Ofcom including whether these included a geographic phone numbers option.  Even if Keycom are routing the calls to your rooms using a voip system you can still have geographic voip phone numbers - see www.sipgate.co.uk

Apart from making life hard for the university with questions your only work around is probably using a service like www.voipbuster.co.uk which lets you call any geographic uk phone number for free.  Or as a last resort you could get Skype although they charge you to call geographic phone numbers unlike voipbuster