wrote in message

In article
,
(Mizter T) wrote:

As I said, I do write and speak the codes properly myself, which can
throw people somewhat. But I also use 8-digit numbers from my
landline, so it all makes sense to me! (Less so I suppose to those
who only use mobiles.)

It would be instructive to know what proportion of within-London
calls are dialled from London landlines as 11 digits. Rather a lot, I
fear.

Probably so -- is there any (price) penalty for so doing?

Mizter T wrote:
On Jul 19, 1:49 am, John B wrote:

On Jul 18, 7:57 pm, Arthur Figgis wrote:

Lots of places have signs but no distinct government. I think I've seen
"England" on signs, and even "London" is rather complex concept to pin
down as a specific "thing".
England exists, legally, though - e.g. the Department of [English]
Health.

Rubbish - see Charles Ellson's answer. The Department of Health has a
whole number of UK-wide responsibilities as well as its (primary)
responsibility for healthcare in England and Wales.

England does of course exist legally - though there are a number of
areas where a reference to England is actually an abbreviated
reference to England *and* Wales (e.g. reference to contracts being
enforced according to "English law" in "English courts"). In the past
one could have said that constitutionally Wales was basically part of
England, but with devolution this description would be less apt.

London is easy: the Corporation's area is the City of London, the GLA
area is Greater London, and there isn't anything else.

Yes there is. There's the London postal district - and there's a whole
number of places within Greater London that are outwith the London
postal district (e.g. in the south east fringes there's lots of places
with "Bromley" as the post town and hence BRx postcodes - back when
the postal county was properly included as part of the address, these
places would have had Kent in their address too, and many people still
continue to include it).

It was never properly included. Postcodes were trialled in Watford and
we were told from the outset not to put the county name.

On Jul 20, 3:47*pm, Martin Edwards wrote:
It was never properly included. *Postcodes were trialled in Watford and
we were told from the outset not to put the county name.

Yeah, that's perhaps because Watford was a major post town not
requiring a county. There were 110 of these (http://en.wikipedia.org/
wiki/Postal_county#Usage ) has a list.

The 'canonical' address for everywhere outside these 110 post towns
did have a "postal county" until 1996. These matched no given set of
ceremonial, geographic, or historic counties, including Middlesex (two
detached segments in north-west London, including Spelthorne which was
added to Surrey, but not including Potters Bar, which was added to
Hertfordshire at the same time), Merseyside, North Humberside, but no
Greater Manchester, Rutland, or Huntingdonshire.

A bit weirdly, recently, the "former postal county" field in one of
the post office databases has been changed to 'Rutland' for LE15 and
part of LE16. This rewrites history for the sake of some campaigners
who found it offensive that they were continuing to get mailshots from
people including 'Leicestershire' in their address - it would have
been better in my opinion to cease supplying the field entirely, or
make it much harder to get hold of, in the hope that people supplying
such mailshots would start using the canonical addresses! This is of
course making it much harder to justify the continued existence of
'North Humberside' and 'South Humberside' in that database, so expect
to see those gone soon too.

--
Abi

In message , at 13:36:53 on Mon, 20 Jul 2009,
John Levine remarked:
RFC 3482 gives a thorough, somewhat numbing, overview of number portability:

http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc3482.txt

The right way to do it is to look up each number when the call is
placed to find out where to deliver it. The wrong way is to implement
it as a variety of call forwarding. As of 2003 when the RFC was
written, the UK did it mostly the wrong way, with some BT switches
doing it closer to the right way. A quick look at the OFCOM site
suggests nothing much has changed since then.

They are on the way to implementing the central database approach.

http://www.ofcom.org.uk/consult/cond...iew/statement/

UK portability will always be inferior to North American portability,
since it doesn't permit porting between landline and mobile, but there
isn't much to be done about that.

That's more of a billing issue, as the termination revenue is what
mainly funds the mobile networks, so you need to know when you place a
call how much it's going to cost you (as caller). Even if the billing
system could be arranged to charge different amounts for numbers from
the same dialling code.
--
Roland Perry

Tim Roll-Pickering wrote:
John B wrote:

It seems to me that you have to get quite close to central London, at
least
south of the river, before the locals regard themselves as living 'in
London'.

Hmm. Kingston definitely; Croydon and Sutton less so (or at least, I
don't think Croydonians view themselves as in Surrey - whether they
view themselves as Londoners is another question...)

The main reason is almost certainly down to the survival of the counties in
the mailing addresses. A postal county was never needed for CROYDON, so
people have had much less of a reason to include "Surrey" in their
addresses, whereas until 1996 "Surrey" was needed for KINGSTON.

(That said, BROMLEY and TWICKENHAM also didn't require counties - what's the
view there? And aren't there some DARTFORD addresses within the Greater
London boundaries?)

Before 1965 Croydon was a county borough (then lacking Coulsdon and Purley
which formed an Urban District) so Surrey County Council had less of an
impact there. My experience of the Sutton attitude is different

Sutton is (Surrey) on timetables and (London) on tickets. Or is it the
other way round? General references to it as Surrey are quite common,
though might be because there are so many Suttons. Even in Greater
London it doesn't seem to be known for anything, other than occasional
Thameslink passengers finding themselves there rather than Gatwick or
Brighton.

In contrast, Croydon, Twickenham etc are probably well enough known in
their own right - you only need to specify if you mean a different Croydon.

--
Arthur Figgis Surrey, UK

Arthur Figgis wrote:

Before 1965 Croydon was a county borough (then lacking Coulsdon and
Purley which formed an Urban District) so Surrey County Council had less
of an impact there. My experience of the Sutton attitude is different

Sutton is (Surrey) on timetables and (London) on tickets. Or is it the
other way round?

The tickets I have to hand from a few years ago (great for bookmarks) say
"SUTTON LONDON". I can't remember seeing it on timetables, but a quick check
of Qjump shows they call it "Sutton (Surrey)".

In message , at 15:38:00 on
Mon, 20 Jul 2009, Recliner remarked:
It would be instructive to know what proportion of within-London
calls are dialled from London landlines as 11 digits. Rather a lot, I
fear.

Probably so -- is there any (price) penalty for so doing?

Not on the calls. But if we'd been brave enough to make everyone dial
11-digit numbers then the various "PhoneDay" code changes would have
been much simpler, and saved money that way.
--
Roland Perry

Abigail Brady wrote:

such mailshots would start using the canonical addresses! This is of
course making it much harder to justify the continued existence of
'North Humberside' and 'South Humberside' in that database, so expect
to see those gone soon too.

The use of North Humberside had a useful function in that it was a firm
indication that the sender had got my name off a list, and was almost
certainly sending junk, instead of being someone I actually wanted to
hear from.

--
Arthur Figgis

"Roland Perry" wrote in message

In message , at 15:38:00 on
Mon, 20 Jul 2009, Recliner remarked:
It would be instructive to know what proportion of within-London
calls are dialled from London landlines as 11 digits. Rather a lot,
I fear.

Probably so -- is there any (price) penalty for so doing?

Not on the calls. But if we'd been brave enough to make everyone dial
11-digit numbers then the various "PhoneDay" code changes would have
been much simpler, and saved money that way.

Well, I live in London, but dial 15-digit numbers even for local numbers
as I use an indirect (free) service. Of course, I don't dial the 4-digit
prefix, but have it on a memory button. I can't understand why anyone
chooses to pay BT's phone charges when these are entirely optional
(apart from the line rental). I can call the US for less than BT's local
charges.

On Mon, 20 Jul 2009 07:14:23 +0100, Roland Perry
wrote:

In message , at 02:04:47 on
Mon, 20 Jul 2009, Charles Ellson remarked:

ISTR the exchange "owning" the number now rejects the call and
instructs the originating exchange where to send it (all done in
milliseconds) BICBW.

That's what they do for number portability. Perhaps it's also used for
out-of-area numbers, but I'm not aware of it.

A trawl of the OFCOM website suggests they only recognise "number
portability" in terms of mobile and 070x numbers.

There's an EU Directive that says all numbers must be portable.

I know, but the way OFCOM talks about them seems to suggest that they
use a different phrase for landlines.

Landlines are at the moment.

They were around 20 years ago. We had some fun at work when some "XXO"
(151 for engineers) circuits were transferred from one exchange to
another. Previously the system had worked by translating "1??" to a
directory number feeding the building's PABX which fed the test room;
this had worked quite happily until the transfer after which it was
found that calls were being charged instead of free, the local
exchange refused to pass the calls unmetered (it was suspected that it
was an "undocumented" anti-fraud feature) so the original translation
of 1?? was restored and the own-exchange number was put on permanent
diversion to a directory number on the exchange up the road.

AFAICT their explanation seems much the same as how the System X
version was explained to me for "permanent diversion" which took over
on lines previously hard-wired to a remote location.

Currently number portability is implemented by the "old" exchange having
a list of numbers which have been ported, and forwarding them to the
relevant new exchange. This has many disadvantages and will be replaced
by a new "Direct Routing" system which interrogates a central database
to discover which exchange (and which telco) the call should be
delivered to.

The older version on some exchanges required use of a directory
number at the exchange actually serving the subscriber to which calls
were silently diverted by the exchange which "owned" the number; IIRC
that became unneccesary once everything was replaced by System X or newer.

Calls are still diverted. Maybe System X means you don't have to use up
a "mapping" number at the destination exchange any more.

Call diversion tends to be charged by use, whereas an out of area number
would be a flat rate.

It would not be the first time that the same service was sold at
different rates with different names.

Call diversion, as an explicit service, costs a lot of resource (eg
CPU). I'm speculating that the telcos can deliver an "unlimited" number
of diverted calls cheaper than running a leased line (and hence
implement it that way, today). But the customer probably prefers a flat
rate, rather than paying per call.