On Mon, 3 Jan 2005 08:41:20 +0000, "Clive D. W. Feather"
wrote:

In article ,
Martin Underwood writes
By the way, how did changing from 0171 xxx yyyy or 0181 xxx yyyy to 020 7xxx
yyyy or 020 8xxx yyyy help alleviate the shortage of available numbers in
London? It didn't increase the number of available phone numbers

Actually, it did: it made the 70xx, 71xx, 80xx, and 81xx blocks
available.


Of course the phone number in the subject line is within the 70
blocks.

So is my office phone number. This arose because City University
already had phone numbers in two separate ranges, 7477 and 7505, and
would I believe have needed to find space in a third range for any
expansion in the number of separate phone numbers within the
university. So instead all the existing numbers were switched to the
7040 range (with a transitional period during which both old and new
numbers worked)

I'm fairly certain that I haven't seen any 80 or 81 numbers in use,
which fits with the remark elsewhere in the thread that the former
0171 range was the one approaching capacity.

Martin