2026-09-27

Fictional phone ranges in France, Australia and Ireland, and new phone guides, terms and comparisons

Phone lookups flag the numbers ARCEP, ACMA and ComReg reserve for films and television as fictional, as they already did for 555-01XX and Ofcom's drama ranges. Eight phone guides, fifteen phone glossary terms, six more phone comparisons and sign-in recipes for Firebase, Supabase, Amazon Cognito and Auth0.

Fictional ranges in France, Australia and Ireland. Phone lookups now flag the numbers ARCEP, ACMA and ComReg reserve for films, television and other creative works, as they already did for the North American 555-01XX block and Ofcom's drama ranges. The ranges are ARCEP's audiovisual blocks 01 99 00, 02 61 91, 03 53 01, 04 65 71 and 05 36 49, plus 06 39 98, which sits in Mayotte's mobile range and is dialled +262 639 98 xx xx; ACMA's (02), (03), (07) and (08) 5550 xxxx and 7010 xxxx, its thirty listed 0491 57x mobiles, 1800 160 401, 1800 975 707 to 711 and 1300 975 707 to 711; and ComReg's 089 011 0000 to 089 011 0999. A number in one of them answers valid: true with is_fictional: true and the fictional signal (+80). The default SMS policy refuses it with blocked_by: "fictional", and it costs one credit like any valid number. Before this change the five French geographic blocks answered unassigned_block and +262 639 98 answered invalid_number, both free, while the Australian and Irish numbers answered valid, unflagged and ok_to_send: true. Ireland's 020 code is recorded but still answers invalid_number, because ComReg gives it no line type. The fictional-ranges dataset version is 2026-09-27, and each range now names its publisher's document and the day it was read.
Country pages count reserved single numbers apart. The fictional-ranges line on a country page counts ranges and single numbers separately (Australia: 8 ranges and 41 single numbers), and ARCEP's +262 639 98 is counted on Mayotte's page, not Réunion's.
Phone guides, terms, comparisons and integrations. Eight new guides: an area code is not a time zone, fictional and test phone numbers, how to store phone numbers in E.164, number pooling, SMS delivery error codes, SMS pumping and the default SMS policy, UK number ranges from 01 to 09 and what FTC unwanted-call complaints can and cannot say about a number. The glossary gains fifteen phone terms, from number pooling and rate centre to SMS pumping and the live carrier check, and the phone docs' field table, area-code pages and country pages link them. /compare/phone adds Veriphone, Abstract Phone Validation, ClearoutPhone, numlookupapi, IPQualityScore Phone Validation and Loqate Phone Validation, each read from the vendor's own pages on 27 September 2026, and every phone comparison gains an SMS pumping controls row. The HubSpot, Klaviyo, Typeform, Pipedrive, Salesforce, ActiveCampaign and Airtable integration guides now cover phone numbers, and a new Sign-in and one-time codes category has recipes for Firebase Authentication, Supabase Auth, Amazon Cognito and Auth0 that check a number before a code is sent. The guide on why US numbers cannot be split into mobile and landline no longer says every UK 07 number is a mobile: only 071 to 075 and 077 to 079 are.

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