Channel 4’s Big Brother may be back in hot water with Premium Rate Regulator ICSTIS due to a slipup made on this week 2007 Celebrity Big Brother. ICSTIS has said that it intends to examine footage which saw on-screen text mistakenly instruct viewers to place votes to “save” Silpa Shetty while the voiceover said, correctly, a vote would be to “evict” her.

In my opinion a genuine mistake by Big Brother but nether the less ICSTIS has said that it will investigate to see if it breaches their “Code Of Practice”.

Big Brother & ICSTIS are certainly no strangers! BB has recently been hit with an “administration charge” (NOT a fine) for a breach of a recent BB episode and also again during last years Big Brother where evicted house mate Nikki Grahame returned to the BB house after viewers used Premium Rate SMS and Premium Rate Phone Lines to evict her. Although ICSTIS has the power to hand out fines as high as £250,000 for a single offence it is very unlikely that the fine will be any where as high as that, I personally expect Big Brother to receive little more than a slap on the wrist.

Helping Channel 4’s case is the fact that they are already offering refunds to viewers who voted between Wednesday 10pm and Thursday 9pm - estimated by one report at as many as 20,000 - with any unclaimed vote money going to charitiable organisations.

If you called during Wednesday 10pm to Thursday at 9pm ensure that you reclaim your call charge from your Network Operator as your vote didnt count!

The UK’s largest independant Telecoms Company Opera Telecom had a nastry suprise yestaday as a large range of their phone, fax systems crashed! Opera not only provides a wide range of phone lines, premium rate services and fax services to large corporations, TV stations and Radio stations they also provide telephony services to a large majority of telecoms providers.

I’m unclear on the extent of the disruption and exact list of services that are affected but if you have had problems with receiving faxes, voicemails and connecting to non geographic numbers its likely due to this crash.

As of 3:00pm this afternoon the problem still persists, but judging on Opera’s response time in the past it wont be long before their techys get things back to normal!

Are Premium Rate Emails the wave of the future? Premium Rate Numbers & Premium Rate SMS Services have been a huge sucess in the UK’s Premium Rate Industry, so is there room for Premium Rate Emails? Well Phonenumbers4u is going to put it to the test! With a new service we’ve launched for 2007 that works in a suprisingly simple way…

A vendor wants to sell a low cost item e.g. an ebook, ecourse, laser pen, mobile unlocking code or voucher etc and so on his website or advertising he advises his customers that they can either pay by the usual methods credit card, Paypal, cheque etc but they can now by their mobile phone! If the customer wishes to pay via mobile they simply text the vendors keyword e.g. EBOOK followed by their email address e.g. test@test123.com and sent it to the vendors shortcode, in this example 88777.

Working in the same way as the Premium SMS world the user receives a reverse billing SMS message back which advises them to check their email account. This message charges the user for the price of the product e.g. £1.50 / £3.00 or whatever the tariff via their mobs phone credit.

Now heres the cool part Phonenumbers4u’s Premium Rate Email System grabs that email address and sends the customer the vendors “thank for for ordering email” in pretty much real time! The email contains the link, ecourse, ebook or what ever they have just purchased! A really simple, fun and to the best of our knowledge EXCLUSIVE Premium Rate Service that’s 100% automated and expected to be a very popular alternative to payment from credit cards, cheque, postal orders etc

Not just because its a much faster way to pay and allows the customer to purchase without trusting the vendor with their personal details but because it is likely to result in additional sales for the vendor as the customer also doesnt need to trust the vendor with his/her credit card details. A HUGE plus in todays world with record credit card and identity fraud crime.

A service with a bright future? Whats your opinion?

I find lot of Premium Rate & SMS Competition Lovers still find it hard to acknowedge that calls to ITV Plays & ITV’s The Mint programme and others cost the caller 75p per entry and NOT the old fashioned 75p per minute. The line simply bills you the fixed fee, in this case 75p and so as soon as you conect you could stay on for 15 minutes or 15 seconds as the only premium rate charge will be 75p.

Be warned though! Due to premium rate addicts you’re only allowed to enter the Mints Competitions 150 times in a 24hr a period!

Ever been suspicious or unsure of the call cost of a Premium Rate Number? Its well documented that some rogue telecoms providers and their clients avoid stating the call cost or avoid making it crystal clear of the charge to the caller, most popularly used for verbal advertising from which there is little evidence or come back on whether the caller was or was not made aware of the call charge at the time of making the call.

I personally know of cases where they attempt to water down the call charge by saying “talk to horny girls.. blah blah blah blah….., calls cost a MAXIMUM of £1.50 from a BT landline” A rather cunning form of advertising as it implies that call costs could be less but unfortuantly it holds no water as the cost to ring an 090 Premium Rate Number from a BT landline are FIXED 24/7.

Anyway if you are in any doubt on the call charge of any 089, 090, 09 Premium Phone Number or are looking for the telecoms company who operates the service to complain, query etc I recommend you visit www.UKPhoneInfo.com a great website where you can check a range of useful information regarding premium rate lines and other non geographic numbering.