0898 numbers: a short history of UK chat lines

0898 numbers were the premium rate prefix behind Britain's first chat lines. From the late 1980s they filled the tabloids' back pages, billed callers by the minute through the phone bill, and helped bring about regulation of paid calls. The prefix was retired around the turn of the millennium, when premium rate moved to numbers starting 09.

If you were around at the time, you'll remember the back pages. Somewhere between the racing results and the classifieds, column after column of 0898 numbers, each with a name, a photograph and a line of small print nobody read. For a generation of British men, that was their introduction to UK chat lines. For a fair few households, it was their introduction to an unexpectedly large phone bill.

What phone sex means, in one paragraph

Phone sex is a paid, adults-only phone call in which you talk with someone whose job is to hold the conversation: flirtatious, suggestive, sometimes simply companionable. You pay for the time you spend on the line, not a subscription. Strip away the euphemisms and three things have defined it from the start:

• a single number you can ring from any phone;
• a charge that runs by the minute, not by the month;
• a person at the other end whose voice is the whole product.

Before 0898: the birth of premium rate

Britain's premium rate industry began in the mid-1980s, when BT started sharing the revenue from calls to special numbers with the companies behind them. The early services were mostly innocent: recorded football scores, horoscopes, cricket updates, jokes and the weather. The prefixes, 0898 and cousins such as 0891, looked like any other number.

It didn't take long for someone to notice that the same arrangement would carry a very different kind of call. The attraction was never the technology. It was the billing. No card, no account, nothing to fill in: the cost went straight onto the phone bill, and the bill arrived weeks later.

0898 numbers and the tabloid years

By the end of the decade, '0898' had become a punchline in its own right. The adverts filled the tabloids and, later, the lads' mags, and the small print of the day typically read something like 'calls cost 36p per minute cheap rate, 48p per minute at all other times'. Those figures are illustrative of the period rather than any one service. Cheap rate meant evenings and weekends, which is exactly when most of the calls were made.

What the adverts didn't always make clear was what you were paying for. Plenty of lines were recordings rather than live conversations, and some were designed to keep you listening for as long as possible before anything happened. Callers found out the difference several minutes, and several pounds, in.

Britain's first premium rate boom rested on a simple fact: the bill arrived long after the call.

Bills, headlines and a watchdog

The complaints came quickly. The newspapers that carried the adverts also carried the stories: bills running into hundreds of pounds, calls made on phones that weren't the caller's to pay for, the family line, the office, the landlady's phone in the hall.

A regulator was set up in 1986 with the magnificently unsayable name of the Independent Committee for the Supervision of Standards of Telephone Information Services, mercifully shortened to ICSTIS. Over the following years the rules tightened: prices had to be shown in adverts, adult services could not be aimed at under-18s, and networks began offering to bar premium rate calls from a line.

The watchdog changed its name more than once. ICSTIS became PhonepayPlus in 2007 and the Phone-paid Services Authority in 2016, and its work has since been folded into Ofcom.

From 0898 to 09

Around the turn of the millennium, the old premium rate prefixes were moved into a new range starting 09, and 0898 was retired. You won't find a working 0898 number today.

Ofcom later ring-fenced specific blocks, 0908, 0909 and 098, for what it calls sexual entertainment services. The point was clarity: anyone looking at a bill, or asking their network to bar a type of call, could tell exactly what a number was.

In July 2015 pricing changed shape too. Instead of one all-in figure, a call to an 09 number now has two parts: a service charge, set by the line and shown next to the number, and an access charge, set by your own phone company. 09 numbers explained covers how to read the two, and what to check before you ring.

Why chat lines faded, and why they didn't die

Three things did the damage.

The internet made everything else free to look at. What people had paid for by the minute became available without a meter running.

Premium rate lost the public's trust. Surprise bills and lines built to keep you hanging on tied the whole range to the idea of a rip-off, and honest services paid for the dishonest ones.

Mobiles changed the maths. Many networks barred 09 numbers by default, and the access charge on a mobile tends to be higher, as we explain in why 09 calls cost more from a mobile.

Are UK chat lines still around?

Yes, and they never entirely stopped. What changed is how visible they are. You won't see them on a Sunday tabloid's back page or in the late-night adverts on satellite television any more. They moved to the web, where a line has to explain itself properly: who answers, what it costs, how the call works.

What didn't change is why people ring. A good share of the demand was never purely sexual. A lot of calls were what we would now call company: talking to someone, late at night, without having to explain yourself. The shift workers, the long-distance lorry drivers, the recently divorced, the simply awake at two in the morning. That need didn't disappear with the tabloid adverts.

The part that survived: the voice

The voice is still the one channel that carries hesitation, rhythm, a smile and tiredness. Decades of text and apps haven't replaced it, which is why a business written off every ten years keeps going.

What has changed recently is the question of who, or what, picks up, which we look at in AI phone sex vs a real voice. At Covmod the answer is straightforward: real adult women, working with our telephony partner. How a call works today, from choosing someone to keying in her code, is set out on how it works.

So UK chat lines aren't a relic. They outlived 0898, the internet, dating apps and their own dreadful reputation because they met a need nothing else met quite as well: hearing someone. The prefix changed and so did the rules. The reason people ring hasn't moved an inch.

Frequently asked questions

What were 0898 numbers?

0898 was one of the original British premium rate prefixes, launched in the 1980s when BT began sharing call revenue with service providers. It carried everything from football scores and horoscopes to the adult chat lines advertised in the tabloids. Callers paid by the minute through their phone bill, which is why the prefix became a byword for surprise bills.

Do 0898 numbers still work?

No. The 0898 range was retired around the turn of the millennium, when premium rate services moved to numbers starting 09. Today, Ofcom reserves 0908, 0909 and 098 for adult entertainment lines, so a British chat line you see advertised now should be on one of those prefixes. An 0898 number in an old magazine will simply fail to connect.

Is phone sex legal in the UK?

Between adults, yes, provided the service follows the rules. In broad terms, it has to run on the number ranges set aside for it, show its price clearly next to the number and not be aimed at anyone under 18. Ofcom oversees premium rate services and the advertising codes apply to how they are promoted. This is a summary, not legal advice.

Why were chat line calls so expensive?

Because the price paid for a person's time rather than a product. A live call kept one person busy for its whole length, which limits how many calls a service can take at once. In the early years, the lack of clear price rules and lines built to keep callers waiting made bills higher still, which is what prompted regulation.