A brief history of UK telecoms and 0800 numbers

Edinburgh born Alexander Graham Bell constructed his first telephone in Boston, USA, in 1875, which was patented the following year. On 10th March 1876, Bell spoke the first recognisable words on the telephone: "Mr Watson, come here, I want you". In 1878, the Telephone Company Ltd was formed in the UK to sell telephones. This was taken over by the Post Office in 1912, which then controlled almost the entire telephone network in the UK.

Telecommunications however really took off in the UK when Subscriber Trunk Dialling (STD) codes were first introduced in 1958 to allow callers to call another telephone directly without having to go through the operator. This was marked on 5th December by the Queen calling the Lord Provost of Edinburgh from the Bristol Central Telephone Exchange across 300 miles. The Queen then pressed a switch putting 18,000 telephones onto the new system, although this wasn't completed until 1979.

Big developments then came thick and fast. In 1959, "subscribers" to the telephone system became "customers". Until this point, operators had only been able to say "number please" to their subscribers. After this change, they were allowed to wish their "customers" a good morning , good afternoon or good evening! Pay-on-answer coinboxes on public telephones also began to be introduced in 1959. The Post Office first introduced freephone to subscribers in 1959. It introduced a freephone services for business users in 1960, which was the forerunner of the BT Freefone and Lo-call services.

The Post Office, which had previously been a government department with the Postmaster-General sitting in cabinet, became a public corporation (or nationalised industry) under the Labour government in 1969. This split the Post Office into two separate businesses – one for post and one for telecommunications.

In 1980, the telecommunications side of the Post Office was named British Telecom by the then Secretary of State for Industry, Sir Keith Joseph, who was part of Margaret Thatcher's new Conservative government. British Telecom remained part of the Post Office until the following year, when it became a separate public corporation under the British Telecommunications Act 1981. The act allowed for competition in communications, and in 1982 Mercury Communications Ltd was created as the main competitor to British Telecoms. This was a consortium of Cable & Wireless, British Petroleum and Barclays Merchant Bank. In 1983, British Telecoms and Mercury Communications were granted a 7 year duopoly on Britain's telecommunications, until 1991, when full competition was allowed. British Telecoms became a Public Limited Company (plc) in 1984, being privatised throughout the decade until 1993. Oftel (Office of Telecommunications) was created to regulate it, which was transferred to OFCOM (Office of Communications) in 2003. British Telecoms became BT in 1991, and is now one of the largest communications companies in the world.

Trials of the Linkline 0800 and 0345 services began on 12 November 1985. An International 0800 service was opened from the United States. Linkline was later marketed as Freefone and Lo-Call.

PhONE day was the 16th April 1995, when the number 1 was inserted into all UK geographic codes after the 0 and numbers were expanded to make sure there was room for more phone numbers.

Orange UK first started charging customers to call 0800 numbers in December 2005. Since then, almost all networks charge for calls to almost all 0800 numbers made from mobile phones.