"Clive D. W. Feather" wrote in message
...
In article , Stephen Osborn
writes
'phONEday' was in 1995 and all STD codes that did not start 01 had a 1
inserted.

Except for the five that got completely changed.

I meant that all STD codes that did not start 01 were changed so that they
did start 01.

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.

Even so, it almost broke. Over a quarter of calls were misdialled on the
first day; 30% was the "the network will break" line.

Surely, that shows the right date was chosen.

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.

Not so.

Planned as in will happen in the near future, not as in an exact timetable.

It was not implemented until c. a year later to let people get used to
the
previous set of changes.

That would have been silly, given it wasn't done anywhere else. If it
was certain that Reading would be about to fill, it would have been
better to do it with the other five.

The others basically had to changed so it made sense to do it the same time
as phONEday. Given that Reading did not *have* to be done then it made
sense to implement the change a while later. Two changes in, say, four
months would have been rather annoying for the people of Reading (and anyone
who called there).

Nobody was quite sure whether Reading was going to fill up, or if
somewhere else would beat it, nor what the best long-term strategy was
with something like 30 areas approaching trouble. So 0118 was held in
reserve for the next place needing transition - this turned out to be
Reading.

Somewhere else could have 'filled up' before Reading but it was not likely.
If they had they would have got 0118.

regards

Stephen