Who Called Me from 01856 (Orkney)?

01856 is the UK dialling code for Orkney, in the historic county of Orkney, covering an area with a population of approximately 22,270. Numbers in this area follow the format 018561234567 — the dialling code, followed by a local number assigned to a specific Communications Provider (CP).

Ofcom has allocated 133 number blocks within the 01856 range, spread across BT, Virgin Media, Sky, TalkTalk, Gamma and many smaller UK CPs. Each block of 1,000 (or sometimes 10,000) numbers is owned by a single CP, which may then assign individual numbers to its own customers or to resellers further down the chain. You can see the full block-by-block allocation list below.

Although 01856 originally indicated the geographic location of the line, UK number portability means a phone with this prefix can technically be located anywhere. For most landlines the geographic match still holds, but for VoIP-only numbers it does not. If you receive a call from a 01856 number and you don't recognise it, you can match the next four digits (the "block") against the table below to identify the originally-allocated network operator.