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VoIP User has now started it's public beta of the UK number tool. Feel free to register for a free account to get yourself a UK phonenumber that can be forwarded to any SIP phone or to landlines in several countries throughout the world. Do let us know your experience with the service in the VoIP forum.

How to setup your free UK national rate numbers

How does it work?

When you join this site as a member you have access to a control panel which interfaces to our telephone gateway. We issue you with local rate phone number (at no cost to you) which you can then "point" to any phone number in a variety of countries across the globe, enabling you to make calls to those international numbers from the UK at a UK local rate. You can also "point" this number at a SIP Phone allowing you to receive internet phone calls o­n your SIP Phone from callers dialling that UK local rate number.

How can you do this for free?

Setting up the service doesn't actually cost us anything, so we pass the service o­n for free o­n a no-guarantee of service basis. If you're a business telecoms user interested in this technology, then please contact us for rates and service-level guarantee options.

We get a kick-back from the telephone service providers based o­n call charges and that's how we make our money.

OK, so what I do now?

Join this site as a member. You'll then see a new menu option "My numbers" in the main menu (top left of screen) when you login. This takes you to your control panel where you can get your free local rate numbers and point them to forward to landlines, mobiles and SIP (VoIP internet) telephones.

In the control panel click o­n the "Request a number" link. You can then request a Local Rate or National Rate UK phone number. o­ne of the local rate numbers can o­nly be used during weekdays - see the chart o­n this page for more info.

Once you have selected a number type (you can have o­ne of each), click the request button. The database will then auto-allocate your number. You must agree to this sites terms and conditions which are, in short, that we are providing this service for free, and we do not offer any form of service level agreement. This service is aimed at consumers o­nly. If you are a business you should contact us direct for available business packages.

Take a note of your new number and then click the link to be taken back to your control panel to set the destination for your new number.

You now have two options, you can point this number at a SIP phone if you have o­ne by ticking the top left hand radio button and entering your SIP address in the top edit box.

If you wish to forward to a Worldwide landline, click the lower radio button, use the drop down menu to select the country to forward to and enter the phone number in the corresponding edit box, omitting the leading zero and starting with the Wordlwide area code.

That's it. Allow the database about 5 minutes to update the servers and your number will be available to use.

Please note that if this number is not used for a period of 3 months, the number will be considered unwanted and will be returned to the issue pool. To ensure your number remains active, you should use it at least o­nce every three months.

Note: charges mentioned o­n this website are what a caller would pay calling o­ne of our numbers from a standard landline. If a provider decides to add a premium to this rate, then this is, of course, out of our control.