The most popular 0800 number?

I keep wondering, what are the most popular, the most used, the most advertised 0800 numbers? Surely the Crimestoppers number has to be up there, as every time I put the phrase 0800 numbers into a Google search, it brings up something on the first page to do with Crimestoppers. Maybe that is just the most newsworthy. Anyone else got any other thoughts?

Blog expands to include international freephone numbers

Up until now, this blog has mainly focused on 0800 freephone numbers in the UK, but of course freephone numbers are used worldwide, not just in the UK. In the UK of course, 0800 is the freephone number, but a wide range of different numbers are used across the globe. Therefore, in the future, whilst still considering UK freephone numbers, we will also be looking at international toll free forwarding numbers.

So, this includes 1 800, 1 855, 1 866 and 1 877 numbers in the USA, 0805 numbers in France, and countries which also have 0800 numbers, which include Germany and New Zealand.

More and more telecoms companies are now offering toll free numbers internationally, which is why we are expanding the material covered in this blog to take account of that. Look out for this in future blogposts!

A brief history of UK freephone numbers

If like me you're a bit of a history buff then you might be interested to learn a little bit about the history of UK 0800 numbers.

The Post Office, which had controlled the telephone system in the UK since 1912, introduced freephone services to subscribers in 1959 and to business services in 1960.

Linkline 0800 and 0345 numbers were first introduced in 1985, and became freefone and lo-call afterwards. In 2000, BT's 0345 numbers and Mercury's 0645 numbers were merged to create the present day 0845 numbers.