Short mobile. What is the shortest mobile phone number? How to find out the cost of a call or SMS to any short number
Now a significant part of mobile phone owners remember short numbers (4-6 digits) mainly thanks to the security services of banks and auxiliary information services of various companies or organizations. However, a couple of years ago, short numbers were a very noticeable and significant phenomenon in mobile communications.
The cost of calls to short numbers does not depend on the subscriber's tariff, but on the desire of the owner of a particular number. Short numbers belong not to operators at all, as is commonly believed, but to organizations that provide various services– from music sales and legal advice to “adult” conversations. The funds deducted from the subscriber's mobile account are divided between the telecom operator and the content provider, while the latter can give part of its share to its partners also involved in the provision of the service.
Due to the ease of launching services on short numbers and their super popularity among Russians, mobile scammers quickly became interested in this market. Not the least role in this was played by the lack of clear legislative norms regulating a new sphere for the domestic economy. Despite the fact that the end services were not controlled by operators, with claims - and not small ones - in cases of fraud, subscribers traditionally came to them. Much that is connected with short numbers is still heavily demonized, despite the fact that the market for such services has already ceased to be "wild". Let's try to understand the dark past of content services and see their prospects.
heyday
What is the secret of the success of shortcodes as a means of obtaining content? At the beginning of the 21st century, when mobile phones became much cheaper and ceased to be an exclusive attribute of wealth, Internet penetration in Russia was still low, mobile internet- especially. Newspapers, television, radio, and books were typical sources of new information and entertainment. And here the operators gave an interesting alternative with their short numbers.
Owner mobile phone thanks to short numbers, it became possible to receive news, find out exchange rates, weather forecast or your horoscope - here and now, anywhere and anytime. Then Cell Phones were a curiosity, and many liked to decorate their gadget with pictures or stand out with an original ringtone. All this uncomplicated but sought-after content filled thick free catalogs, and they were in great demand in the salons of mobile operators.
In part, short numbers performed the function of today's social networks. Dating services by SMS appeared and telephone services for conversations on "adult" topics - the entertainment industry rarely does without it. Operational consultations and references in various areas were provided by paid support services. Cellular communication and short numbers opened up so many new things for people that content services experienced a real boom. According to AC&M Consulting, in 2009 the volume of the content market for short numbers exceeded 33 billion rubles, and a year later this figure grew by almost 20%. Consumption of some services in 2007-2009 could grow several times a year, and growth of tens of percent was quite common.
Oddly enough, the content market was helped by the growth of Internet access penetration in Russia. Various sites that offered to download programs, photos or films often gave this opportunity after sending a paid SMS to short number. Some services that were opened on the network sold VIP statuses to their users in the same way. Good example- dating websites.
In the years when there was no talk of any e-commerce in Russia, there was often no alternative to short numbers as a means of payment. Instead of all current electronic money, internet banking and credit cards back then there were only short numbers. It was their golden (in different senses) time.
Found a scythe on a stone
At the intersection of popularity and paid services, there are always those who want to get rich in a slightly dishonest or openly criminal way. Content providers from time to time resorted to concealment of its cost, reported it in an incorrect form, and simply deceived, for example, by providing false information in the description of services.
In the early 2000s, a typical collaboration between an operator and a service provider was like this. The supplier came up with a service that needed a short number. The operator of this number provided and received part of the income from the service.
Of course, the operator knew exactly how much money each SMS subscriber costs for each short number. However, there was no technical or legal possibility to fully control how exactly the service provider promotes it, and whether they indicate somewhere on the Internet the cost of 1 ruble for what actually costs 10. The fight against scammers from short numbers, in which operators were involved, sometimes put the latter in a delicate situation: they were required to perform punitive functions related to law enforcement agencies.
The situation was aggravated by the inattention of the subscribers themselves. Very often, buying through a short number is impulsive: the desire to get what you want as quickly as possible overpowers caution, and people do not read the terms of service, even if they are truthful and right in front of their eyes. A purchase is made, money is debited from the account - sometimes much more than the subscriber expected.
One way or another, users by the end of the first decade of the century began to complain, and quite a lot. Of course, these complaints received, for the most part, cellular operators. Disputes could be resolved peacefully, but not always. The stories of disgruntled people became public from time to time.
It often happened that the scandals were inflated on purpose by those who consumed the content consciously, and then played the role of the victim, a kind of victim of injustice. In the eyes of society, short codes have become an absolute evil and unplanned expenses, and operators have become robbers. Subscribers began to appeal to the state, to the antimonopoly department, to those authorities that are responsible for the communications market.
On the other side of the account
There is an opinion that operators cellular communication, watching the troubles of their subscribers, they left everything as it is, and did nothing. This, of course, is not true. Letting everything take its course for the operators was, first of all, simply unprofitable. On the one hand, the operators received a share in the income, including from fraudulent services. On the other hand, the legal mobile content market was much larger, and the cellular companies themselves were actively developing their own additional services, from melodies instead of beeps to mobile payments. Decreased confidence in additional services greatly hampered the development of these segments.
As early as the middle of the first decade of this century, operators began to reduce the number of content partners in order to improve the control of the services provided. First of all, relations with unscrupulous partners were broken off - the services of such companies were closed by dozens a year. Instead of many partnerships, by now there are only a few agreements with aggregators that take under their wing the end services and are responsible for them.
Around the same time, in the middle of the 2000s, operators developed and implemented tools that allow them to inform subscribers about the cost of sending an SMS to a specific short number before sending it. This immediately and noticeably affected the reduction in the number of applications with claims.
In 2012, MTS introduced mandatory prior notification of the cost of all SMS to short numbers and launched a platform for managing SMS subscriptions on its website: it became impossible to bypass it a single subscription from a short number. This double whammy cut the monthly number of fraud complaints by a factor of four. By the way, in 2012, MTS processed about 200,000 such requests, most of which occurred in the first half of the year. That year, about fifty million rubles were returned to subscribers. Even then, in most cases, in case of complaints about unlawfully deducted funds for content, the funds were immediately returned to the subscriber, and only after that the proceedings began about who was to blame.
In 2013, MTS launched a massive campaign to renegotiate contracts with content providers. Fines for them for violations in the sale of content and the provision of services increased many times over, sometimes exceeding the cost of the services rendered by 15 times. In the same year, a content ban service appeared: by connecting it, you can completely close it for yourself paid services by short numbers. A year after the introduction of the service, 1.5 million people used it.
What is the result? The amount of negativity has been greatly reduced. The number of content partners of the operator is the same. Almost all of the current relatively few partners of operators are service aggregators, and not content owners themselves. Because of the “tightening the screws” by the operators, they were also among the victims: revenues from short numbers dropped significantly.
legal case
In parallel with the "war" with providers, there was an intensive joint work with state regulators and legislative bodies. In 2012, Deputy Sergei Zheleznyak took the initiative to amend the the federal law“On Communications”, which were supposed to take into account the current situation in the mobile content market.
For several years, the parties participating in the discussion of the bill solved a difficult task: on the one hand, it was necessary to protect the interests of subscribers, on the other hand, not to kill the entire mobile content market with excessively harsh laws, many of whose participants conscientiously conducted their business. Information services free of charge for end users worked on the same numbers, and short numbers also became a common means of making contributions to charitable purposes.
A lot of copies around legislative changes were broken, but compromises were found. In 2014, amendments to the law "On Communications" came into force, establishing the rules currently in force for the provision of content services through short numbers.
Now all mobile operators in Russia without fail inform subscribers in advance about the cost of all SMS to short numbers. Only by agreeing to the rates, the subscriber can receive the service and reduce the balance of his personal account accordingly. If desired, the subscriber can ask the operator to open a separate account for this type of service, so that there is not even a theoretical possibility to reset the main account, from which charges for regular communication services are charged.
Internet offensive
However, even in a secure environment created in a short time, short numbers are unlikely to be what they were. The main reason for this lies not at all in trust, in the financial and legal spheres, but in newer technologies.
The development of 3G and 4G networks, the emergence of fast and affordable mobile Internet in a particular city has a strong and negative impact on the consumption of content through short numbers. This does not mean that the content became unnecessary or became worse. It’s just that instead of a regular phone, a smartphone appeared in the hands, and everything you need can be found on the Internet, and at the same time, for free. Communication in in social networks, high-quality video from anywhere, mobile TV without being tied to an antenna: there is no doubt that smartphones are the future of mobile content.
This future promises to be quite safe, despite the fact that, alas, attackers keep up with technological trends. They adapted smartphones to the already “lived-in” short numbers and, infecting the gadget with a virus, initiate the sending of expensive SMS without the knowledge of the owner. MTS successfully copes with such unauthorized sending of SMS by informing about the cost of SMS in advance, which malicious programs cannot bypass. In addition, the operator has implemented a system that recognizes the infection of smartphones based on the popular Android platforms: when accessing the Internet, a redirection occurs to a special page informing about a possible infection and offering the subscriber to install a free anti-virus program.
Content services related to short numbers still remain relevant topics who prefers newfangled gadgets regular phone. Now these are mostly older people who have not yet decided to get acquainted with new technologies. For them, a good and safe choice will be those information and entertainment services that MTS has collected on its website - the choice there is huge, while the operator guarantees the accuracy of the description of services, including their cost.
Smartphone owners cannot do without short numbers, although the content has nothing to do with it. Through short numbers, mobile subscribers interact with banks, some municipal and commercial services. Now the number of those people who, by sending SMS to a short number, make their contribution to charity, is growing very quickly. Short numbers are indispensable for live voting on television shows: this is a very common element of many broadcasts. Short numbers have not gone away, but managed to be reborn and remain useful to all mobile users.
In this article, we will discuss short numbers that you are so often offered to call or send messages to receive various kinds of services, order content, etc.
Short numbers, or short codes, are nothing more than special phone numbers for sending text or multimedia (SMS, MMS) messages, or USSD requests from both mobile and landline phones. There are two main types of short numbers:
- Dialing - numbers that are dialed by sending a call (call). Example: requesting your balance by command *100# or *102#
- Messaging - numbers to which you want to send an SMS or MMS message.
Short numbers for Beeline, MTS, MegaFon, Skylink, Tele2, etc. used for a wide variety of purposes:
- Free: connection / disconnection of services, tariff change, etc.
- Paid: ordering content, services such as "Beep", various reference, etc.
Also, short numbers are actively used for such purposes as entertainment services, televoting, gaining access to information, and even for calling a taxi. According to their type of service based on short numbers, there are:
- Voice (voice)
How to find out the cost of a call or SMS to any short number
Before using the service offered to you, find out the cost of SMS to short phone numbers. Often, this information they are trying to hide from us or provide deliberately incorrectly. Good service, informing about the cost of short numbers, is located.
Also, before sending an SMS to a short number, you can first find out information about the price of the service in the following way: send question mark (?) to the short number you need and in return you will receive information about its cost (of course, free of charge).
To put a ban on short numbers, you need to activate the content ban service from your mobile operator. This is done free of charge, for example, through a contact center operator. For MTS, the service is called "Content Ban", for Beeline - "Stop Content", for MegaFon - also "Stop Content" and "Prohibition of Sending Entertainment SMS".
You can find out how to disable the short number in the support service of your operator, or try to do it yourself, send an SMS to it with the word STOP(STOP). MTS subscribers can also unsubscribe from mailings (subscriptions) using the My Subscriptions service or by command *111*919# [call sending].
Most popular short numbers
| Short number | Cost, rub.) |
| 2476 | 170-203 |
| 2855 | 170- 236 |
| 3747 | 177-254 |
| 3855 | 250-354 |
| 4161 | 170-200 |
| 7781 | 170-236 |
| 8510 | 304 (MegaFon) |
| 9151 | 100-150 |
| 9797 | 170-250 |
The popularity of these numbers appeared due to their use by fraudsters for their own selfish purposes.
Short number operator (content provider) at the cost of services from 300 rubles:
| Content provider | Short number | Cost, rub.) |
| LLC "Plastic Media" | 1017 | 354 |
| SMS Services LLC | 1050 | 354 |
| PLAYFON LLC | 1616 | 354 |
| InkorMedia LLC | 2474 | 354 |
| InkorMedia LLC | 3601 | 354 |
| VAS Pay LLC | 3622 | 354 |
| LLC "Plastic Media" | 3698 | 354 |
| First Alternative | 3747 | 354 |
| RM-Invest LLC | 3855 | 354 |
| SMS Services LLC | 4109 | 354 |
| LLC "Plastic Media" | 5370 | 354 |
| SMS Services LLC | 7498 | 354 |
| SMS Services LLC | 7733 | 354 |
| SMS Services LLC | 7918 | 354 | 8110 | 354 |
| InkorMedia LLC | 8750 | 354 |
| InkorMedia LLC | 8916 | 354 |
| InkorMedia LLC | 9395 | 354 |
| InkorMedia LLC | 9690 | 354 |
| InkorMedia LLC | 9800 | 354 |
| First Alternative | 1181 | 300 |
| InkorMedia LLC | 1350 | 300 |
| InkorMedia LLC | 1627 | 300 |
| OOO "Neoline" | 3190 | 300 |
| InkorMedia LLC | 3354 | 300 |
| First Alternative | 3381 | 300 |
| RM-Invest LLC | 3858 | 300 |
| First Alternative | 4124 | 300 |
| First Alternative | 4481 | 300 |
| First Alternative | 5121 | 300 |
| InkorMedia LLC | 5370 | 300 |
| First Alternative | 5581 | 300 |
| InkorMedia LLC | 6005 | 300 |
| First Alternative | 6681 | 300 |
| InkorMedia LLC | 7122 | 300 |
| RM-Invest LLC | 7255 | 300 |
| First Alternative | 8353 | 300 |
| InkorMedia LLC | 8510 | 300 |
| OOO "Telemarket" | 8886 | 300 |
| InkorMedia LLC | 9691 | 300 |
| InkorMedia LLC | 9865 | 300 |
As a conclusion, I would like to give a few tips:
Council the first. If you see a missed call from a short number on your phone, do not call it back. You can get some decent money! Also, for example, by ordering a new picture or melody on your phone using a short number, you can “automatically sign a contract” by issuing a paid SMS subscription (paid incoming SMS).
Tip two. It is better not to contact short numbers at all and do not use their services, even if you really need to find out who owns the phone number on the site or download useful program, and for this you are offered to send SMS to a short number. You can not only become a victim of scammers by short numbers without getting what you want, but again, subscribe to a paid SMS mailing list.
Tip three. If you nevertheless “got on the money” using short numbers or subscribed to a paid content distribution, you can return the money to your account and stop the subscription. Calling the content provider's support for this is usually too difficult (or even useless), although you can try (for example, the A1 aggregator support phone number - First alternative - 88001007337). But it's best to call contact center your telecom operator and demand an unsubscribe and a refund. In the vast majority of cases, they will return the money to you and unsubscribe from the "attached infection" (because the operator is aware of "theft in the law" by short numbers and wants to keep his subscriber).
Council the fourth. Do not be too lazy to turn on the content ban on your number, as well as the numbers of children or relatives who are little aware of cellular communications.
Good luck and less "short numbers"!
They start from three digits - for example, Sberbank occupies the number 900. In general, unlike stationary networks, in cellular networks any combination of numbers is allowed. Therefore, short numbers are often used both by the operator itself and by various commercial services. Accordingly, the cost of calls to short numbers varies from free to higher than international rates.
When a subscriber makes a call to a short number, the PBX - automatic telephone exchange - of the operator replaces it with a regular, "long" number according to its own translation table.
An SMS sent to a short number first gets to the SMS center, which sends it to an external party using an SMPP protocol connection, through an SMS gateway, or using the operator's own protocol. The incoming reply in the form of SMS or MMS is delivered back to the sender. Usually, the fee is charged, as a rule, for the very fact of sending an SMS by the sender, and not for receiving a response.
There are still working phone codes Antarctica, which are occupied by research bases located there, for example, the code +6720 is "Amundsen - Scott" - the American base at the South Pole. There are not so many bases on the mainland, respectively, and the numbers there are short.
What can be typed on the phone and how the phone should interpret it is fixed by a number of standards that describe the MMI (Man-Machine-Interface). This group of standards includes, for example, documents: ETSI TS 122 030, ETS 300 738, etc.
In the GSM network, everything that is not a USSD request is considered as a number and the terminal tries to dial this number. USSD requests are not three-digit numbers. For this reason, by the way, you cannot dial two-digit numbers from a mobile phone. emergency services: 01, 02, 03 etc. Three digits are required, which are formed in several ways, and network operators always support several dialing options. For example, all numbers from 010 to 019 are likely to be routed to 01.
For the PSTN network (our regular wired network, the so-called "terrestrial switched network"), there is no limit of at least three digits. If the switch administrator configures the routing of a single-digit number, then this number will also be valid. Fortunately, administrators do not configure anything about their own desire. Administrators are limited by international and national standards as well as internal rules specific network. Well, again, the number X, if it is not an independent number, then opens the entire pool of numbers for this number. Therefore, in the USSR, zero was the first digit for short numbers, 8 for “exits” to external lines, and intracity numbers began with the rest of the numbers.
There are no USSD requests on CDMA networks. This means that it is technically possible to use numbers from one digit there, but such numbers are not used, since call routing is still based in digital networks, as mentioned above, on narrowing the search by initial digits.
In intranets, the PBX administrator is limited only by the rules of his organization and can configure both a single-digit number and a connection without a number at all. Digital PBXs allow automatic connection without dialing. Moreover, sometimes it is possible to establish a default connection by timeout, even individually for each subscriber. (This is also true for digital PSTN networks, it's just that few city networks sell such a service to their subscribers.) You can probably say that in such cases the minimum number length is zero (although there is some cunning in this).
Well, a separate song is SMS-messages. In your phone settings (moreover, the settings stored on the SIM card) there is a number for sending all messages. That is the SMS center number. This number has a length of 10 to 14 digits in different countries. Shorter numbers are technically possible, but they do not really exist - the numbers of all switches and all SMS centers are regulated centrally throughout the GSM world.
But on the other hand, when sending SMS, you never dial the number of the SMS center, but dial some other number. This number is placed inside the package, which ensures the sending of an SMS message. That is, formally, this is not a number, but part of the data sent along with the text. But nevertheless, it also has a length and the minimum number length for which you can configure routing in the SMS center is 1 character. Moreover, you do not notice it, but when you replace the SIM card, as well as when you switch the parameters associated with receiving a delivery report, your phone can send a message to the number "0". This message may contain the text "report none", for example. This is a service message and it is not charged in any way and you will never see it in detail. In addition, this technology for managing the subscriber profile at the SMS center has practically fallen into disuse after the advent of smartphones. But nevertheless, the shortest SMS number is 1 digit.
