Starhome's European patent for Home Short Codes

Starhome are a company that, 20 minutes ago, I couldn’t have picked out of a line up of global roaming service providers. When we start to get jiggy with network translation layers and HLR systems, that’s when my eyes begin to glaze over. I’m well up for getting technical, but when it comes to mobile industry experience, I’m firmly in the front-end consumer section.

However Starhome’s announcement of a patent for their home short code service caught my attention because, essentially, they would enable me to go to France and still be able to use shortcodes local to my home network in the UK, without needing operators to individually agree to support every shortcode. The dichotomy, however, is that when I’m in France and wanting to be able to use *their* shortcodes to call services… that’s where things can get mightily confusing.

If I wanted to call 118118 whilst in France… I wonder what would happen?