In message , at
11:06:18 on Wed, 20 Mar 2024, Alan Jones remarked:
>On 20/03/2024 08:37, Roland Perry wrote:
>> In message , at 18:02:21 on Tue, 19 Mar
>>2024, The Natural Philosopher remarked:
>>
>>> *I* thought it was one of those cheap rate 0845 numbers.
>> They were invented by my telecoms consultant at UKOnline (he also
>>worked for Demon) in 1995, which is long after the period we were
>>originally discussing.
>
>What was invented? I thought non-geographic numbers were invented by
>AT&T (Bell Labs?) when they developed a technique to translate dialled
>numbers by lookup during call setup. It was one of their most lucrative
>patent families.
What was invented was a very low rate (equivalent to local calls) for
subscribers *anywhere* in the country to call these numbers provided to
ISPs. Part of the low cost was enabled by the way the ISPs were required
to invest in a fibre connection from the telco's exchange to their modem
banks. If you were lucky both would be in the same building.
The main loser was BT, who lost all that long distance call revenue.
Cable companies not so much, as their territory tended to be in large
metropolitan areas which already had local POPs.
--
Roland Perry
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