Shared cost numbers are special rate numbers where the cost is shared between the caller and the owner of that number.
E.g. local rate numbers.
the caller pays the local rate and the company they are calling pays the rest (the cost is shared)
In the UK.. these would typically be 0845 number
In Ireland 1-850 and 1-890
They're normally used for customer service, helplines, sales, radio phone ins, telephone banking etc etc. and have nothing to do with mobiles.
(There's also a regulation here for "bursty numbers" i.e. any number that's likely to result in more than 100 call attempts per second. These must be non-geographic and start with 71. The local exchanges can then manage the traffic without loosing capacity. e.g. if a radio phone in goes crazy and people start phoning 1850 71 5555...)
One of our local radio stations caused chaos during a world cup final ticket give away to the 10th caller. The problem was that the DJ called out their local number instead of the competition line! The local switch, got so busy that other traffic couldn't get through at all.
[This message has been edited by djk (edited 01-14-2005).]
