D.Heale@ee.surrey.ac.uk (04/23/91)
In article <telecom11.278.8@eecs.nwu.edu>, tjo@fulcrum.bt.co.uk (Tim Oldham) writes: > > I believe the reason BT didn't choose the "017 & 018" option is that > > they preferred to keep the entire "01..." sequence clear for as yet > > unspecified future use. > I believe (and I don't speak for my employer on this) that as 01 is > already the international dialling sequence (eg the USA is 0101), 017 > and 018 were out of the question, or just plain confusing. I understand that the reason for not wanting to re-use 01 was so the new numbers were distinct from the old ones. This allowed the new numbers to be introduced before the official change-over and the old ones to be detected and a message given after the change without needing to use timeouts. Another reason for not using 017 and 018 would be that that all National Number Groups (the real area codes) that contain a 1 have this as the last digit and BT seem to be gradually phasing out the subdivision of NNGs into more than 1 area code. Thus if the new numbers started 01 it would probably entail increasing the length of the local number to eight digits and keeping 01 as the code. And John Slater writes: > However it's worth pointing out that there is a proposal to > standardise the international access code throughout the world. I > believe "00" is proposed, as this is used in quite a few countries > already. Germany springs to mind. This would fit in with both US and > UK systems without conflict. (Go ahead, tell me I'm wrong! :-) I think this is a European rather that world wide standard. It would conflict with some current numbers in the UK, eg 005 is used for some local premium rate services and and 003 used for BTs non-cellular mobile telephones. I have read that these are both temporary allocations and would be withdrawn at some stage to free 00 for IDD. There used to be a code 0001 for Dublin which could be used before IDD was available to Ireland and continued to be listed with 010 353 ... for the rest of Ireland, however it seems to have been replaced on the latest list I have seen so it may have been withdrawn. David Heale (D.Heale@ee.surrey.ac.uk)