Selling "golden" landline numbers?

[Louis Balfour]

We've got a couple of "golden" landline business numbers off Nottingham exchange in the following formats:

01159 555 333
01159 55 33 11

and an 0800 number with another provider in this format:

0800 016 11 88

Time was when these would probably have been firstly sellable and secondly desirable. Is that still the case? Yes, I know that they actually belong to the network providers, but I am sure there are ways and means if they are sellable.

Anyone up to date with this sort of thing?

[quinny100]

I used to work for a company that made millions from revenue share on “golden” numbers - but they were doing it in the early noughties. Most were non-geographic. New sales in that part of the business were almost none existent for the last 10 years.

Those numbers don’t look especially desirable. They are the sort of numbers a SIP provider might charge you a couple of quid a month extra for, there’s no real value to them. That’s before you get into the practicalities of porting them to a different customer. The numbers never actually move providers - the original provider is responsible for directing the call to the new provider. Virgin regularly have outages where numbers that were ported over a decade ago to another provider will stop working for a few hours.

I can still remember the numbers for the local taxis (575757) and Chinese takeaway in the town I grew up in. I don’t remember any numbers for anything in the city I’ve lived in for the last 20 years. Memorable numbers have largely had their day.

[4Q]

I would’ve thought the advent of smartphones and Google make phone numbers irreverent nowadays. I can’t remember the last time I typed an actual number when calling someone. If they aren’t in my contacts already it’s usually just a search and click to call.

Taxis used to be quite hot on this kind of thing so you could remember when drunk but most of them use apps to book now anyway.

[Terminator X]

O/T but my BiL had xxxxx 000000 as a mob nr. Someone called him and offered £1k for it about 20 years ago.

TX.

[donkmeister]

4Q said:

I would’ve thought the advent of smartphones and Google make phone numbers irreverent nowadays.

This. A special phone number these days would be like having a special IP address. Yes it looks pleasing, but none of your customers will ever notice it.

I noticed recently that I am more likely to type the name of a business or service into Google and then hit "CALL". I was ringing my GP, I have the number saved in my phone, but my brain just decides "Google it".

I thought it was odd that this is now my thought process, but I'm sure I'm not alone.