[AusNOG] Phone Numbers in Australia

[Matthew Moyle-Croft]

Previous thread about fake caller ID made me think about what phone numbers mean in the Australian context.

Historically we’ve had numbers that are geo based for landlines (02, 03, 08 etc) and other numbers that delineate the cost to call (eg. 04 for mobile, 13/18 for fixed cost non-geo or free, 1900 for “premium” etc). But we’re now looking to a future where a range of factors are meaning that the differentiation is less meaningful. 

A _lot_ of people are moving, because of generation change, NBN, etc to only have a mobile number. Many people are on mobile or “fixed line” plans where calls are all-inclusive so knowing the cost of a call from the phone number is pretty much irrelevant. My parents and some of my grandparents (yes I still have them) basically use mobile only and don’t answer home phones *because* of the scams on home phones!  I don’t actually know what my brothers and sisters home phone numbers are. 

There’s still a historic “interconnect” charging model/market between telcos that I suspect is just as painful as when I last looked at it.

What is the future for voice and calls in Australia? Do geo-numbers make sense? Why shouldn’t I be able to have an 08 xxxx xxxx number as my mobile number? (I know the back-end charging/porting reasons, but we’re looking forward not backward here).

Even calling internationally - voice calls now between countries are generally so awful to use (delay, crappy audio etc) that even for business calls I use things like Facetime/Facebook/WhatsApp/Hangout calls where the voice is so good and low delay I can’t tell where the other person is from.

I suspect nothing much will change and that’s primarily because the major telcos with mobile networks want to continue to make money out of charging each other for calls, but, even that I suspect will all fade away.

We do get attached to phone numbers - my Australian mobile is one from the dawn of GSM in Australia and I’ve had it now for more than 20 years and even though I don’t live in Australia at the moment I keep it running on a long life prepaid! So, don’t think I lack sentiment here.

MMC