Paul Tansom paul@aptanet.com wrote:
Interesting, I thought 0844 was just an extension of 0845, i.e. charged at local rate. Our surgery switched to it a while ago and was very keen to point out that this provided local rate calls to the surgery from wherever you were. [...]
They were probably keen to point that out because it's about the only direct benefit to patients! Some surgeries are being criticised for using 0844, still putting people on hold for long times and banking the revenue-share. This penalises the least healthy (often the poorest) members of the community disproportionately!
0844 is not usually included in telco "all calls" packages, so is a worse deal than an 01, 02 or 03 number for callers. I wouldn't use it for anything aimed at home users and I would never put people on hold-before-answer on 07 or 08 numbers. I think there's a strong argument that hold-before-answer should be banned on 07 and 08.
What do you mean by VoIP routing? [...]
Sending calls to my 08 number direct to my SIP URL, rather than via my 01934->SIP converter. Sorry if I abused the jargon.
Regards,