February 2, 2007
Auctioning off lucky cell phone numbers for charity
To celebrate its user base breaking 500,000, Sichuan Suining Mobile, an affiliate of China Mobile, held a mobile phone number auction to raise funds for local charities and raised over RMB 150,000 (around $ 19,000) for nine numbers, according to ChinaTech News.
"In China, numbers like 8 and 9 are considered auspicious, while a number like 4 is considered very unlucky. Because of this, phone numbers containing multiple 8's or 9's are more desired than numbers with too many 4's."
Related "lucky number" sales stories:
-- The world's most expensive phone number was sold in Qatar for $ 2.8 million
-- A mobile phone number in Bahrain has been put on sale for $13,200, because it has an unusual number sequence. Abdullah al-Hammadi, who specialises in mobiles and car licence plates, told AFP news agency the number 9111119 was coveted by Bahrain's "in-crowd". "
-- In Switzerland, Orange is also selling "premium" numbers, but the cost is considerably less $250-$400.
-- A Chinese bidder who offered to pay 9 million yuan ($ 1.1 million) for a "lucky" mobile phone number. The number, 135 8585 8585, when prounounced in Chinese sounds like "let me be rich be rich be rich be rich". Numbers related to birthdays and lucky numbers generally sell between 100 yuan ($12.-) and 100,000 yuan ($12'000.-)
And chilling:
-- Killer numbers. Nigerians are panicking over rumours that it is possible for a GSM phone to kill people. "Local media reported that the stories claiming people have died after they received phone calls from certain numbers owned by the local GSM operator, Vmobile.
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