"Martin Underwood" wrote in message
...

I know the situation in Yorkshire better than Anglia:
at one time UA, UB, UM were Leeds, YG was
Bradford, CX was Huddersfield and HL was Wakefield.
These were merged so that all these letters signified
"somewhere in West Yorkshire". I think the size of the
region covered was further increased with the new-style
AA05 BBB numberplates. I'm not sure why they even
bothered to use new letters: the A123 BCD format
had a two-letter location code (CD) so why not continue
to use the same code in the new-style numberplates?

With the old system, the hooligans of Dunfermline weren't finding it easy
enough to recognise the English cars.

--
John Rowland - Spamtrapped
Transport Plans for the London Area, updated 2001
http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Acro...69/tpftla.html
A man's vehicle is a symbol of his manhood.
That's why my vehicle's the Piccadilly Line -
It's the size of a county and it comes every two and a half minutes

Martin Underwood wrote:
"Jack Taylor" wrote in message
...

"Clive Page" wrote in message
...

One notes with surprise that an extraordinary number of
shop-fronts and commercial vehicles appear to have been
re-painted in the brief period during which the area codes were
0207 and 0208, and not to have been re-painted afterwards. What
a pity that nobody told them to wait for the second number change
of the pair. :-)

I would hardly say 'with surprise', Clive. The whole exercise was
so spectacularly mismanaged and the misinformation or
disinformation that was received by the general public at large
made such a shambles a foregone conclusion. If I had been the
owner of a property or vehicle that had been erroneously numbered
as a result of this mismanagement then I would have been making a
considerable amount of noise about who would be compensating me
for correcting the situation!

I'm usually fairly clued-up about technical changes like this, but
I hadn't appreciated that there was an interim time when 0208 xxx
yyyy and xxx yyyy were valid: I thought they went straight from
0171 xxx yyyy to 020 7xxx yyyy. What a shame the Oftel made such a
dog's breakfast of the changes in London and didn't have the
foresight to go straight from 01 xxx yyyy to 020 7xxx yyyy in one
go :-(

See my other post; I think Clive is mistaken. In any case, they
couldn't go straight from 01 to 020 7 because 0207 was already the code
for Consett, Durham (now 01207). Similarly, 0208 was Bodmin, Cornwall.

I've seen quite a few vehicles which even to this day bear phone
numbers such as 01532 xxxxxx or 01734 xxxxxx, having blindly
applied the "insert a 1" rule to codes that changed completely - eg
to 0113 or 0118.

I don't know about Leeds, but Reading changed to 01734 in 1995
(phONEday). The new code of 0118 was introduced in 1996, in parallel
with 01734 which was withdrawn in 1998.
--
Richard J.
(to e-mail me, swap uk and yon in address)

"Richard J." typed

See my other post; I think Clive is mistaken. In any case, they
couldn't go straight from 01 to 020 7 because 0207 was already the code
for Consett, Durham (now 01207). Similarly, 0208 was Bodmin, Cornwall.

Ummm... The 1 was inserted in 1995 to all trunk numbers. London numbers
changed from 071 to 0171 etc
London got the 020 prefix _much_ later (?2001)

I've seen quite a few vehicles which even to this day bear phone
numbers such as 01532 xxxxxx or 01734 xxxxxx, having blindly
applied the "insert a 1" rule to codes that changed completely - eg
to 0113 or 0118.

01532 and 01734 were valid dialling codes for several years

I don't know about Leeds, but Reading changed to 01734 in 1995
(phONEday). The new code of 0118 was introduced in 1996, in parallel
with 01734 which was withdrawn in 1998.

--
Helen D. Vecht:
Edgware.

"Richard J." wrote in message
. ..
Martin Underwood wrote:
"Jack Taylor" wrote in message
...

"Clive Page" wrote in message
...

I've seen quite a few vehicles which even to this day bear phone
numbers such as 01532 xxxxxx or 01734 xxxxxx, having blindly
applied the "insert a 1" rule to codes that changed completely - eg
to 0113 or 0118.

I don't know about Leeds, but Reading changed to 01734 in 1995
(phONEday). The new code of 0118 was introduced in 1996, in parallel
with 01734 which was withdrawn in 1998.

My memory must be playing tricks with me (nothing new there!) - I could have
sworn that Leeds changed to 0113 2 at the same time as most other exchanges
had a 1 inserted in their code. I used to phone my grandpa in Leeds every so
often and I'm sure I had to change from 0532 671xxx to 0113 2671xxx without
an intervening 01532 671xxx. Now I think about it more, I believe that
Reading did change from 0(1)734 to 0118 later than phONEday, so maybe 01734
was valid for a while.

"Jack Taylor" wrote in message
. ..

"Martin Underwood" wrote in message
...

The code that they've used is quite cunning:
for vehicles registered between March and September, the two digits are
always the last two digits of the year; for vehicles registered between
September and March, the two digits are always (year of the September) +
50.

What I still don't understand is what is going to happen in March 2011, if
they continue with the present logic, which is to use '0' to indicate
March
registrations and '5' to indicate September and the other digit to
represent
the last digit of the year! There will still be plenty of vehicles on the
road registered in March 2001 as aa01 abc. Should be interesting!

Conside the following examples:

Mar 2004 04
Sep 2004 54
Mar 2009 09
Sep 2009 59
Mar 2010 10
Sep 2010 60
Mar 2020 20
Sep 2020 70
Mar 2049 49
Sep 2049 99

So for vehicles registered in Mar-Sep, the digits will be the last two of
the year; for vehicles registered in Sep-Mar, the digits will be the last
two of the year in which the September occurred + 50. This will last until
2050, when a new system will be required.

"John Shelley" wrote in message
news

Instead of 2 x 10,000,000
numbers there are now100,000,000.

No, a significant proportion of those 100,000,000 are unusable, because they
start with 0, or 1, or 999.... also one leading digit (possibly 2) will
never be used, because that will be added to the beginning when the numbers
eventually become 020 abc def ghj.

--
John Rowland - Spamtrapped
Transport Plans for the London Area, updated 2001
http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Acro...69/tpftla.html
A man's vehicle is a symbol of his manhood.
That's why my vehicle's the Piccadilly Line -
It's the size of a county and it comes every two and a half minutes

"Stephen Osborn" wrote in message
...

Your 'phone line will physically be connected to a some
sort of device locally. However this could be a consolidation
device that takes all of those lines on to a neighbouring
exchange building. Alternatively it could just take *some*
of those lines to a neighbouring exchange building if there
are logistcal reasons. For example the one room in the
building still being used for exchanges only has room for
three and a half sets of lines - don't forget that at some
stage 9,999 lines have to be connected up to each local
exchange.

What might the rest of the exchange be used for? I know that part of the
WIllesden exchange in Harlesden Road is being / has been converted to flats,
but what about others?

--
John Rowland - Spamtrapped
Transport Plans for the London Area, updated 2001
http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Acro...69/tpftla.html
A man's vehicle is a symbol of his manhood.
That's why my vehicle's the Piccadilly Line -
It's the size of a county and it comes every two and a half minutes

On Fri, 31 Dec 2004 19:00:43 +0000 (UTC), "Terry Harper"
wrote:
"Ian Jelf" wrote in message
...

The only country where I've ever noticed major differences in number
length is Germany, where they can be very variable, even on the same
exchange.

Is this because they show direct dialling inward with the PBAX as, say,
06857-2456-0 and the extensions as 06857-2456-154?

Yes, that's part of it, but "normal" single-line numbers can have
varying lengths - perhaps longer for newer numbers - and some (mainly
business) users have 4 or 5-digit numbers even in a large city that
otherwise has up to 8-digits. As an example, I looked for hotels in
Frankfurt on www.gelbeseiten.de and found 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 and even 10
digits in the local number, though that last one may have been a DDI
as Terry says, without the usual hyphen.

Richard.

On Sat, 1 Jan 2005 09:49:11 -0000, "Martin Underwood"
wrote:

"Jack Taylor" wrote in message
...

"Martin Underwood" wrote in message
...

The code that they've used is quite cunning:
for vehicles registered between March and September, the two digits are
always the last two digits of the year; for vehicles registered between
September and March, the two digits are always (year of the September) +
50.

What I still don't understand is what is going to happen in March 2011, if
they continue with the present logic, which is to use '0' to indicate
March
registrations and '5' to indicate September and the other digit to
represent
the last digit of the year! There will still be plenty of vehicles on the
road registered in March 2001 as aa01 abc. Should be interesting!

Conside the following examples:

Mar 2004 04
Sep 2004 54
Mar 2009 09
Sep 2009 59
Mar 2010 10
Sep 2010 60
Mar 2020 20
Sep 2020 70
Mar 2049 49
Sep 2049 99

So for vehicles registered in Mar-Sep, the digits will be the last two of
the year; for vehicles registered in Sep-Mar, the digits will be the last
two of the year in which the September occurred + 50. This will last until
2050, when a new system will be required.



As I understand it, the idea is to use the format XXX 01 PP from March
2051, and XXX 51 PP from September 2051 where XXX are random letters
and PP is a place designator, so the present system could actually
last until 2100

Martin

"Helen Deborah Vecht" wrote in message
...
"Richard J." typed

See my other post; I think Clive is mistaken. In any case, they
couldn't go straight from 01 to 020 7 because 0207 was already the code
for Consett, Durham (now 01207). Similarly, 0208 was Bodmin, Cornwall.

Ummm... The 1 was inserted in 1995 to all trunk numbers. London numbers
changed from 071 to 0171 etc
London got the 020 prefix _much_ later (?2001)

'phONEday' was in 1995 and all STD codes that did not start 01 had a 1
inserted.

The flash change over for London numbers (from 0171 xxx xxxx to 020 7xxx
xxxx) was at 1 am on 22nd April 2000.
That was Easter Saturday so there more time than usual to sort out any
problems, also the network load the following week would be lower than
normal.


I've seen quite a few vehicles which even to this day bear phone
numbers such as 01532 xxxxxx or 01734 xxxxxx, having blindly
applied the "insert a 1" rule to codes that changed completely - eg
to 0113 or 0118.

01532 and 01734 were valid dialling codes for several years

I don't know about Leeds, but Reading changed to 01734 in 1995
(phONEday). The new code of 0118 was introduced in 1996, in parallel
with 01734 which was withdrawn in 1998.

Reading was changed to 01734 in 1995 as part of phONEday but that number was
already getting close to full and the change to 0118 was already planned.
It was not implemented until c. a year later to let people get used to the
previous set of changes.


--
Helen D. Vecht:
Edgware.


One thing that I think is important is who had responsibility for number
changes.
When London was changed from 01 to 071/081 this was done by BT who had
control of all 'phone numbers then.
The change from 071/081 to 0171/0181 (as part of phONEday) was done by Oftel
who had taken over responsibility by then, but not that long beforehand.

IMHO a lot of the subsequent problems were caused by Oftel not really
knowing what they were doing. Oftel did say that this would be the last
London change for a long time (decades?) which was patently untrue to anyone
who knew about the telecoms market. Sadly that does not include the staff
of Oftel who are civil servants w/o telecoms expertise.

regards

Stephen