Get yourself a personalised mobile phone number

Stuart Corner
Friday, 13 November 2009 06:25

Your IT - Home IT

Australian Mobile Telecommunications Group (AMT) has launched a service, My Number, that enables mobile phone users to buy a mobile number that, when translated using the letters on a phone's keypad, spells something meaningful. Owners of meaningful numbers can also auction these via the My Number website.

By visiting www.mynumber.com.au people can use the Number2 Word generator to discover what words their existing number may form, or in reverse, type in a word that has meaning to them to find out what numbers match.
 
They can browse available numbers, purchase the number and select their preferred network from My Number partnered carriers, which are currently Optus, Virgin and Lebara. Any plans currently offered by these service providers are available to My Number's customers. The company is hoping to reach a similar agreement with VHA (Vodafone & Hutchison).

There are, however a few limitations. My Number business manager, Troy Popovic, (whose mobile number spells 'hooked' or 'honked') told iTWire, that My Number had secured an initial allocation of numbers from 0488 800 000 to 0488 899 999. However not all these number appear to be available though the My Number service. iTWire as unable to return a number for any letter string requiring a number greater than 0488 499 999.

My Number also hopes to gain access to unused numbers allocated to its service provider partners, but at present has access to only a very limited range of Virgin numbers, Popovic said.

For customers hoping to have a meaningful number to auction, there are also some other limitations. Digits '1' and '0' have no letters associated with them and in order to transfer their number users must be out of contract with their service provider, or willing to break contract. They must also not be on the Telstra network.

For other carriers the sold number will be transferred to a prepaid sim and the seller issued with a new number. Popovic said My Number had not been able to get Telstra to agree to this process, which involves considerable back end work for the telco.

Numbers derived from a word sell for $125 each. My Number also offers numbers in several other categories: silver ($185), gold ($300), platinum ($500+) and cultural ($518). Silver, gold and platinum numbers are simply those where the sequence of numbers is perceived to have some value. Cultural numbers are those containing a sequence of numbers that has meaning in a particular culture, or where the sound of the numbers when spoken has significance. Amazingly, there are hundreds of such numbers.

Numbers are allocated by the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA). Popovic said it had taken My Number nine months to reach agreement with the ACMA before it could launch its service and that My Number had to become a registered carriage service provider.

The ACMA charges fees for allocated numbers and as they are a limited resource is not keen to see them unused. In the case of numbers that did not form any meaningful words and were not otherwise saleable, Popovic said My Number would try and user them for mobile services provided by AMT's existing retail service provider partners. He added that some customers might also be interested in purchasing blocks of contiguous numbers.