They claim that all call made to and particularly from the Isle of Man (Which also links to Guernsey's phone Network which is not international) is classed as an international call and charged at international rate. Further, they refuse to recognize the significance of the UK connection that the Isle of Man has and will not allow calls made from there to be included in peoples free minutes. Basically if you have a contract with the above companies your free minutes are pointless.

The mobile phone companies blame the Isle of Man and the Isle of Man say that its up to the phone networks how they operate thier tariffs. Either way many companies such as chat lines etc. have recognized the benefits of deceiving customers with the 07624 code so that calls can be charged at international rate. Further, an agreement with the Isle of Man government has been arranged with these companies to ensure that they receive the full cost of the call, less Manx Telecoms local rate Hence the reason why companies use the facility. Clearly showing that Manx Telecom and the Isle of Man government do have sway over the pricing structure of calls.

As the Isle of Man is outside UK control, the policy is left to the the MHK's (Manx MP's) to police and investigate. Unfortunately and we go back to the start of this piece. Manx Telecom is government regulated. That is to say that its government has its finger in the pie of the profits from the Tax that the company makes. Coupled with the lure of a unique pricing policy for unscupulous businesses to exploit, it offers and attractive money making scheme at the expense of both the UK and its own Islands population.

They claim that all call made to and particularly from the Isle of Man (Which also links to Guernsey's phone Network which is not international) is classed as an international call and charged at international rate. Further, they refuse to recognize the significance of the UK connection that the Isle of Man has and will not allow calls made from there to be included in peoples free minutes. Basically if you have a contract with the above companies your free minutes are pointless.

The mobile phone companies blame the Isle of Man and the Isle of Man say that its up to the phone networks how they operate thier tariffs. Either way many companies such as chat lines etc. have recognized the benefits of deceiving customers with the 07624 code so that calls can be charged at international rate. Further, an agreement with the Isle of Man government has been arranged with these companies to ensure that they receive the full cost of the call, less Manx Telecoms local rate Hence the reason why companies use the facility. Clearly showing that Manx Telecom and the Isle of Man government do have sway over the pricing structure of calls.

As the Isle of Man is outside UK control, the policy is left to the the MHK's (Manx MP's) to police and investigate. Unfortunately and we go back to the start of this piece. Manx Telecom is government regulated. That is to say that its government has its finger in the pie of the profits from the Tax that the company makes. Coupled with the lure of a unique pricing policy for unscupulous businesses to exploit, it offers and attractive money making scheme at the expense of both the UK and its own Islands population.

Firstly, 07624 is an Isle of Man number, not a UK number.

“For some reason, T-Mobile customers and Three customers are being charged international rates to send text messages to that block of numbers”

Because it's an international number, not a UK number.

“Surely it’s a bit naughty for these operators to classify a number range that you, I and anyone else would recognise as thoroughly ‘British’ as an international rate text?”

The Isle of Man may be “British” (a crown dependency, I think) but it's not part of the UK.

07624 is not even in the ranges used by any other mobile providers (which start 075, 077, 078, 079), in fact 076 is otherwise allocated to UK pagers, some of them charge more than 07624!

Maybe you should do some research on telephone numbering before dialling numbers unaware of the potential charges. If you don't like the otherwise free Twitter service, then you don't have to use it. Use another site instead.

As for “the point is international calls should have a different country code otherwise consumers don't know they're making an international call” – then you should bring this up with Oftel and the ITU. It's nothing to do with Twitter.

It's not just +44 numbers that are affected. In North America, the country code 1 is shared by Canada, the USA and many Caribbean nations.

It would like like a real grey area that some companies may be making the most of??

This is why I use http://m.twitter.com instead. SO much cheaper.

“I found this post because I’ve recently taken up a contract with Three that includes free texts, yet I’ve been charged 25p (inc VAT) for texts to Twitter, that come up as “Manx Mobile”. I had no idea these would not be included in my allowance.

I shall follow Rich’s (comment 20) example and complain, but I feel duped – I took up this contract *because* of the free texts, knowing that I’d use them to send messages to Twitter”

Did you ask 3 if Twitter texts were included? They’d probably not know how Twitter SMS are sent, and Twitter might change provider, you can hardly expect an MNO to track every possible service. Or would you have them automatically stop SMS sending/arriving if a service provider changed their aggregator? Maybe block the service/any service likely to be more pricey than normal?

‘Can ‘o’ Worms’ doesn’t do it justice….

Mike

the high interconnect rates on non-mainland long numbers are a problem.

However, your only other real choice if you want a “true” UK number is voda long numbers. We can offer these – there are only a handful of providers that can, – this is because (1) vodafone don’t have too many partners and (2) the connection to vodafone for this service is very complex.

the market for long numbers is also changing – we’re open to negotiation on price depending on your usage model..

cheers

adam/aql

I shall follow Rich’s (comment 20) example and complain, but I feel duped – I took up this contract *because* of the free texts, knowing that I’d use them to send messages to Twitter.

Thank you for posting this – at least I know now why I’ve been charged…

Isle of Wight and the Isle of Sheppey next in the masterplan from the geography committee in Hatfield?

“As a Crown dependency, the ultimate responsibility for the government of the Island is vested in the Crown. By long standing convention, the U.K. Government does not legislate for the Island except with the specific consent of the Island’s Government. ”

Hence why Ofcom cannot interfere.

The Isle Of Man has also recently further strengthened it’s international identity (1st May 2007 – http://www.gov.im/lib/news/cso/internationalide.xml)

Originally the Isle Of Man was included in the UK numbering scheme, and still is until this day, and I quote wikipedia;

“The telephone service in the United Kingdom was originally provided by private companies and local councils. But by 1912–13 [2] all except the telephone service of Kingston upon Hull, Yorkshire and Guernsey had been bought out by the Post Office. The Post Office also operated telephone services in Jersey until 1923 and the Isle of Man until 1969 when the islands took over responsibility for their own postal and telephone services – although the Isle of Man remained part of British Telecom until 1987″

I believe that like Ireland, the Isle Of Man should have it’s own country code, and be seperated from the UK numbering scheme once and for all, if it refuses to play fair ball.

If it is part of the UK numbering scheme, it should be regulated by ofcom, the same as any of the mainland operators.

Maybe the Isle Of Man should keep their 6 digit numbering scheme, and adopt the international dialling prexfix (+466) (IOM), because at the moment, as far as I can see, they are being (+27737’s)… I’ll let you work that out for yourselves.

I don’t know how Ofcom would see this legally, as although these numbers are part of the UK numbering plan they’re not technically in the UK. Therefore the operators could claim they’re allowed to charge it as international. However, as so many SMS aggregators use these types of numbers, and they are ’sold’ to all intents and purposes as standard UK mobile numbers, they might have to sit up and take interest.

If the main UK operators made it a little bit easier to get hold of long numbers on their own networks at a half decent price, and perhaps with a bit of revenue share along the way, the whole industry wouldn’t be so fond of the offshore solution. I mean, it’s not just me is it? There’s not a huge amount of aggregators out there that I know of that offer Vodafone long numbers, or the like.