covert@covert.enet.dec.com (John R. Covert) (09/25/90)
OK, so if the DBP has (as reported in soc.culture.german) officially announced that the postal codes will be D-Wxxxx and D-Oxxxx until a complete reorganization in 1992, have they announced what is happening with the telephone system? One option is to just decide that Germany is fortunate to have two country codes and continue to use both. Another option would be to move all of East Germany's codes into the combined system by prefixing all of them with "3" (e.g. Dresden is now -51 and would become -351; Berlin might, like London, have two codes, -30 for the western part and -31 or -32 for the eastern part). This is possible because +49 currently only has -30 assigned, and no +37 codes begin with -0. East Berlin is currently -2. This would only work if there are no eight digit numbers in Dresden (and corresponding restrictions on other cities), since the CCITT recommends a maximum of twelve digits for an entire phone number counting the country code but not the international access code. john