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My impression is that the Personal European Number is a sort of attempt of exhuming something like the "Personal number" that we had in Italy (abbandoned by Telecom Italia at the end of 2003 - but, if I am not mistaken, still used by some operators like Tiscali to provide some services - in the case of Tiscali a freefax/email service)

The idea of the Personal Number was to have a single number that would forward any call to mobile/fix line (just like the P.E.N.). What made it a total failure was, I think, not only the cost (having to pay the call forwarding) but also the number which had been adopted: still today, it's difficult to find out how much you spend when calling a 178 number! But above everything else, the most stupid part of this project is that 178 cannot be called from abroad!!! :meh: