Steve Fitzgerald wrote:

I can't speak for the rest of the world, but I understood it perfectly at
the time and subsequently.

Erm but your job "involved dealing with telephone connections" - maybe you
had reason to understand the logistics behind it.

I don't ever remember an official message saying or implying that numbers
went from 0171/0181 to 0207/0208.

I was out of London at the time and missed some of the actual BT adverts but
my recollection is that it was certainly summed up as "numbers beginning
this become that" in the media. But putting it the other way round - was the
remerger of the two areas highlighted much?