I’m just relooking at the various Voice Over IP (VoIP) services on offer and I’ve found quite a number offering 056 numbers. Telephone numbers starting 056 are officially classed by Ofcom as “Location Independent Electronic Communications Service” (in the Ofcom National Telephone Numbering Plan) and have been allocated by Ofcom since September 2004 (so they aren’t exactly new!) and are mainly used for VoIP. However, trying to find out how much it costs to actually call these numbers is quite difficult – here’s a list of the call charges I’ve found for UK 056 VoIP numbers: and they vary quite a bit (and sometimes, it’s very difficult to find out how much they actually cost to call from the different telephone networks):
Where the tariff/plan may alter the call costs, I’ve included details:
BT: Call band “g21” (the same band as 03 numbers). 4.784p per minute daytime/1.955p per minute evening/1.150p per minute weekend
o2 iPhone 35 Pay Month: 20p per minute at all times (found via telephone customer services: they had to call back!)
Orange: Pricing unavailable (live chat)
Virgin Media Land Lines: Call band PG21. 7.82p connection fee and 4.79p per minute daytime/1.96p evening Price guide
T-Mobile (Combi plan): 40p per minute t all times (according to telephone customer services)
Tesco Land Line: 6p setup charge, 5p per minute daytime, 2p per minute evening, 1p per minute weekend
Gradwell: 1.36p per minute peak, 0.85p per minute offpeak and weekends
Vonage: 1p per minute at all times
Congratulations to Virgin, Tesco, Gradwell and Vonage for having the most easiest to find price guide (bonus points to Gradwell for having a simple “Telephone number lookup” section), BT next (slightly more difficult) and thumbs down to Orange being unable to find any pricing!