"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with 01734 which was withdrawn in 1998.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