Shares in TalkTalk rise

In amongst all the doom and gloom when it comes to financial reports, it is nice to see some good news for the telecoms sector. Many telecoms companies are reporting that they are doing quite well, and one such report that caught our eye last week was about TalkTalk. Shares in the telephone and broadband company rose by more than 20% last week after it doubled its pre-tax profit for the year and increased its full year dividend by almost two thirds.

It has also seen a slowing down in customer departures, as it has been trying to loose the reputation that is had had for poor customer service. This came to public attention when it was fined £3million by the telecoms regulator, OFCOM, for billing ex-customers. Losses reduced to 13,000 last quarter, down from the 43,000 of the previous quarter.

TalkTalk plans to launch YouView in the summer, a new version of Freeview which it feels will help it compete better with BT, Virgin Media and B-Sky-B. It is clear that TalkTalk isn’t out of the woods yet, but it is good to see things are looking better for them and hope that this continues.

Virtual Phone Numbers provider profile: Gold Local Numbers

This week we’re going to look at an old favourite from the list of virtual number providers – Gold Local Numbers. Gold Local Numbers is a nice little site, with a line of water along the top of each page, and a happy looking goldfish beneath the waterline.

Further down the page, a talking goldfish appears with speech bubbles highlighting some of their key selling points, such as:
 
•    pay per second billing, where you only pay for exactly what you use
 
•    fully itemised billing, so you have the full details of all your calls

•     no long term contracts, so you only have to give 30 days written notice to cancel
 
•    a range of optional features, with amusing names like Whisper Gold and Golden Greeting
 
Everything on their site is as standard – so they offer STD codes for around 500 different UK towns & cities, all of which are listed on the site, and can be viewed either alphabetically or numerically. Their local numbers are not VOIP (voice over internet protocol), so you get a higher quality phone call. Their numbers can be pointed to a landline or a mobile, and they offer fax to email numbers too.

Virtual Phone Numbers provider profile: Organic Local Numbers

Occasionally we want to you bring you profiles of those providers of virtual local phone numbers that we think are good companies and that have been helpful and informative to us when creating this blog. Today we are giving a brief profile of Organic Local Numbers.

Organic Numbers, like many telecoms providers, also offer 0800, 0845 and 0844 numbers, as well as London phone numbers. They also offer fax to email as well as telephone numbers in all of these categories, and a range of extra features.

They have a nice environmentally friendly focus to their business, highlighted perhaps best by their very green website with pictures of leaves. They cover around 470 different area codes around the UK, which means a large majority of area codes in Great Britain and Northern Ireland are covered. They don’t use VOIP, which is always good news, their prices are fair and reasonable, and they have pay per second billing which is also always good news.

The rhetoric on the site about the numbers having been “carefully raised and nurtured in beautiful English countryside”, containing “no sugar, dyes or artificial ingredients” and having “no carbon footprint” is all quite fun and brings the site to life. If you’re looking for virtual numbers, their site is well worth a visit.

Site dedicated to history and info on virtual phone numbers

We found quite an interesting little site the other day called Local Number Wiki - which describes itself as an information website dedicated to UK telecoms and local phone numbers.

There was some fascinating information on there, including a bit of a history of British telecommunications, a brief history of virtual and local phone numbers in the UK, and a Did You Know timeline of telecoms in the UK over the last century or so.

Some fascinating little snippets included the first telephone book being published in 1880 with no phone numbers, just addresses, so you had to phone the operator for the details. Not surprisingly the first name listed was a gentleman in London! Ericsson (recognise the name?!) invented the telephone headset, red telephone boxes were created for King George VI's Silver Jubilee, 999 became the emergency number in 1937, and the centre of Great Britain, Dunsop Bridge in the Forest of Bowland in Lancashire, is marked by Britain's 100,000th BT payphone! (see the typically British plaque above!) Well worth a look at!

Phone hacking - under siege Murdoch appears before Parliament again

Moving away from virtual phone numbers again this week, we are drawn back to the telephone number phone hacking scandal again. It really does make for compelling viewing! Yesterday we had the increasingly under siege James Murdoch appearing again before the ever growing in confidence Culture, Media and Sport Select Committee. Chairman John Whittingdale and his committee, which includes the Labour MP Tom Watson and the Tory former chick lit writer turned MP Lousie Mensch (nee Bagshawe) are really starting to get used to taking on the Murdoch empire now, with Watson accusing Murdoch of being a mafia boss. The former lawyer for Murdoch's company suggested afterwards that Murdoch has misled Parliament, and there were reports swirling that either Murdoch was not being truthful or was not on top of his job as he should have been. The whole sorry scandal continues.

OFCOM publishes State of the Communications Nation report

Although this blog is mainly about virtual numbers, such as virtual 0207 numbers, we like to cover all aspects of telecommunications. OFCOM published what they are calling their "State of the Communications Nation" report on 1st November. The report shows the state of communications coverage and capacity in the UK. The maps included in the report include outdoor mobile phone coverage and mobile broadband availability. The maps are available on http://maps.ofcom.org.uk. The report also considers the UK's landline network, digital radio and TV coverage in the UK. To see the full report, click here.

Murdoch AGM - phone hacking takes its toll

We promised news on the News Corporation Annual General Meeting in light of the scandal which has seen phone numbers around the UK and the world hacked, from 020 numbers to mobile phone numbers. The event certainly raised more than a few eyebrows for the votes cast against the Murdochs.

Rupert Murdoch was opposed by 14%, up from 2% the previous year.

Around 35% opposed his son's, James Mudoch, re-election, what is important to remember is that the Murdoch family owns around 40% of the shares on News Corp. Taking that into account, the rest of the shareowners make up around 60%, so over half of the non-Murdoch family shareholders voted against James Murdoch.

Murdoch was once indestructible, as was his empire. Slowly, bit by bit, he is taking a knocking.