How much is a phone number worth?

Factual Questions
1

I often hear about companies selling their customer’s phone numbers. How much do they get per number? I can’t imagine it being very much.

2

Do you mean selling the number, as in “I can get you 888-888-8888 from its current user, but it will cost you $10 000,” or do you mean selling lists of active numbers to be targeted for telemarketing and other voice spam?

3

I mean selling lists to telemarketers.

4

This can vary incredibly depending on what the number’s owners have in common, the size of the list, the demographic breakdown of it, and who wants to buy it.

Nowadays, as cellphones are replacing landlines the business of selling customer’s numbers is slowly dwindling. Cellphone numbers are much more ‘fluid’ than landline ones. They’re attached to a person more so than a physical address which makes it harder to know its demographics (owner income, age, property value, school taxes, proximity to retail locations etc.)

BTW, in the movie Glengarry Glen Ross these are essentially what the coveted ‘good leads’ were, the phone numbers of people who fit their targets (older, retired, sitting on a lot of savings and/or un-mortgaged homes etc.)