Ancom - 27 iulie 2011

ANCOM Warns that the Sale of Telephone Numbers Is an Illegal Practice

27.07.2011

Further to the fact that the Authority has received lately numerous complaints concerning the sale or purchase of telephone numbers by means of the paper ads or over the Internet, ANCOM would like to warn that this is an illegal practice, as these numbers are exclusively allotted to the providers of telephone services, who are the only ones that have the right to assign them to the end-users.

If an user puts for sale a telephone number assigned to him/her by a provider, this may be considered a fraud attempt, and, under these circumstances, the provider is entitled to take a series of measures, such as: stopping the provision of services via the respective number, disconnecting the number and placing it under quarantine for a certain period of time, or returning it to the rightful end-user, as the case may be.

The buyers of these numbers are nevertheless those who are most exposed to risks. After paying sometimes amounts that may reach even 1,000 euros for a preferential number, i.e. the so-called “golden number” or “platinum number”, they may discover one day that the number they had bought can no longer be used. “We have received complaints concerning telephone numbers that had been bought over the Internet and turned out to be numbers that had been ported without the observance of the legal provisions in force. When one buys a number from another person, he/she actually buys the right of using the respective number, which belongs to a provider. The latter may anytime regain it if the rightful subscriber fails to observe the conditions under which he/she was assigned the number”, the President of ANCOM, Mr. Cătălin Marinescu, pointed out.

The contracts concluded between the providers and their customers, as well as the terms and conditions for the use of prepaid cards - which represent also a contract that the users bind to observe when purchasing services - provide that the numbers are to be employed by the users as long as the contract is in force or during the validity period of the card, and that they remain under the providers’ control, whereas the non-compliance with the conditions for the use of numbers draws their disconnection and cessation of the service provision.

The transfer of a telephone number between two users, with all the rights and obligations deriving therefrom, is nevertheless possible, under the condition that the provider consents to it and that the transfer is made under the terms established by the provider, through a transfer contract.