Telecom Eireann yesterday lost a High Court dispute with an English company which is introducing a new service to businesses and telephone users in Ireland. Under the service, if a person wanted to contact, for example, a doctor, they may dial the word "doctor" rather than a telephone number and get the appropriate service.
The service is called alpha-numeric numbering. Each of the numbers of a telephone keypad (with the exception of 1 and 0) convert into letters. The international standard reads 2-ABC; 3-DEF; 4-GHI up to 9-WXYZ.
A doctor or florist or customer for such a service would be unlikely to be able to deal with the number of calls that might be made to their practice or business if they had the alpha-numeric numbers to "doctor" or "flowers".
In the US many of these services are provided on a group or franchise basis.
Yesterday Mr Justice Kelly held that the Zockoll group of companies in Surrey was entitled to eight choice freephone numbers which translate to the words "florist", "service", "direct", "drains", "Dyno-Rod", "insure", "mobile" and "flowers".
Telecom had agreed to give the numbers to the Zockoll group but later withdrew the freephone numbers and said it would offer alternative numbers.
It was alleged by Telecom that Zockoll was "brokering" the numbers. The company denied any brokering or wrongful activity.