070 personal numbers

What are 070 personal numbers?

Telephone numbers beginning with 070 are known as 'personal' or 'follow me' numbers and are different from the other 07 numbers used by mobile phones and pagers.

Personal numbers allow a person or businesses to give out a single phone number, then redirect their incoming calls to different locations as and when they choose.

As an example, an organisation may publish an 070 number for out-of-hours enquiries and then redirect it to the mobile phone of whoever is on duty each day. Or, an individual could set up an 070 number to ring their home, work or mobile phones in a set order or even simultaneously at different times of day.

070 numbers can also be used as temporary numbers. For example, somebody selling a car through classified adverts could set up an 070 number to receive enquiries then disable the number after the car has been sold, rather than publishing their real home or mobile number.

070 number call costs

The cost of calling 070 personal numbers can vary significantly from the cost of calling regular mobiles or landlines. While prices have reduced in recent years, it's advisable to check costs before calling.

History and notes

Adoption of personal numbers

Demand for personal numbers has remained low, with Ofcom reducing the quantity of numbers reserved for such purposes from 600 million to just 100 million. Most users who need to redirect calls appear to prefer simply diverting their real mobile or landline number to other locations as required.

As such numbers are easy to acquire and hide the underlying landline or mobile number from the caller they have at times been favoured by fraudsters or individuals who wish to conceal their identity.

However, 070 numbers are well established in a few niche areas such as bedside telephone services in hospitals, telephone dating mailboxes and disposable numbering for classified advertisers.

1993	First personal numbering services launched using 0956 7xxxxx range.
1995	Dedicated 070 personal numbering range introduced.
2001	Old 0956 7xxxxx numbers move to 07010 7xxxxx.
2009	Telecoms companies banned from sharing revenue with 070 number users, to try and reduce scams.
2019	New price capping comes into effect and call charges begin to fall.