"Steve Fitzgerald" ] wrote in message
...
In message ,
Martin Underwood writes

I'd have thought that U and V were fairly easy to distinguish - unlike a
letter D, a letter O and a digit 0 which *can* very easily be confused in
the square font that's used on numberplates. OK, so you won't have an O
or 0
in the year position, but D and O are allowed interchangably in
three-letter
part of the numberplate. DDO, DOD, ODD, OOD and other permutations are
extremely hard to distinguish.

And U was used in the Isle Of Man for MAN xxxU, AMN xxxU etc.
registrations similar to British ones.

There was a time when you had the choice of pressed number plates with the
square font, or Bluemell's-type plates with riveted-on numbers, using a more
rounded font. My house number plates are the latter type, which in my view
were far superior to the old pressed type. My first new car was UDF 173 and
somewhere along the line we had VJG 129 W. I think that the risks of
confusion are slight, but it was really in the handwriting used to record
them that confusion could arise.
--
Terry Harper, Web Co-ordinator, The Omnibus Society
75th Anniversary 2004, see http://www.omnibussoc.org/75th.htm
E-mail:
URL: http://www.terry.harper.btinternet.co.uk/

In article , Clive Page wrote:
Hence the continued confusion, or at least lack of concern with
putting the space in the right place when quoting a number.

My office phone socket has a nice BT label put on it by the
installing engineer 1st October 2002 (when I moved in):
0208 744 2002

When BT engineers can't get it right what hope?

--
Tony Bryer

In message ,
Martin Underwood writes

And U was used in the Isle Of Man for MAN xxxU, AMN xxxU etc.
registrations similar to British ones.

I didn't know that? So did they use the letter suffix to denote the year? If
so, did it start at the same time as in Great Britain - ie A=1963, B=1964
etc? If so, I presume it went out of sync in the early 80s when IOM used U
and GB used V.

They followed the same basic sequence as us although I don't know if
they adopted it at the same time. MAN xxxA - MAN xxxY then Axxx MAN -
Yxxx MAN. They seem to have arbitrarily also used MAN xxxx and xxxx MAN
over the years too. They are currently using the series (I think
they're up to) GMN xxxA - GMN xxxY having started at AMN a few years
ago. The marks MAN and MN were reserved for their use and were never
used on the mainland. The London office that issued AN multiples never
used MAN for that reason.

It certainly doesn't seem to follow our years and one just follows on
from the last one.
--
Steve Fitzgerald has now left the building.
You will find him in London's Docklands, E16, UK
(please use the reply to address for email)

On Fri, 31 Dec 2004 12:24:45 -0000, "Martin Underwood"
wrote:

By the way, how did changing from 0171 xxx yyyy or 0181 xxx yyyy to 020 7xxx
yyyy or 020 8xxx yyyy help alleviate the shortage of available numbers in
London? It didn't increase the number of available phone numbers - all it
did was to change the mapping slightly. OK, so there's scope for additional
district codes beginning with digits other than 7 or 8, but it's not
districts that are in short supply, it's subscriber numbers (the xxxx in the
above example).

I think the intention is to have 020 [0-9]xxx xxxx, giving quite a lot
of extra numbers. While I doubt there'd be a mass renumbering of
existing districts, I suspect some districts may well end up with two
prefixes to give more capacity.

Neil

--
Neil Williams in Milton Keynes, UK
When replying please use neil at the above domain
'wensleydale' is a spam trap and is not read.

On Fri, 31 Dec 2004 19:43:54 -0000, "Martin Underwood"
wrote:

But once there would be far more offices, each with its own mark(s): now
they've merged the marks so you cannot tell so accurately where a car was
registered.

Perhaps not - but the new style, similar to the German plates (though
not quite as well) is more memorable, as the codes do bear some kind
of resemblance to the area they are associated with, and there are few
enough of them for the lot to be memorable.

Thus, the only "random" parts of the plate (from the point of view of
a layman) are the second letter and latter 3 letters, whereas on the
old style the age letter would probably be quite memorable, but then
followed by up to 3 random numbers and 3 random letters.

The place of initial registration, after all, is not really that
useful a piece of information unless you wish to buy the car - and you
can get much more detail from the V5 if you do.

Neil

--
Neil Williams in Milton Keynes, UK
When replying please use neil at the above domain
'wensleydale' is a spam trap and is not read.

On Fri, 31 Dec 2004 20:35:21 -0000, "Jack Taylor"
wrote:

Whoever decided that '0' should represent March registrations and '5'
October? What happens if, at some time in the future, they decide to use
every month as a registration month?

Because the system will last 49 years (or thereabouts) as it is
without a change being required (though one may well be introduced
anyway, knowing the Government!).

Neil

--
Neil Williams in Milton Keynes, UK
When replying please use neil at the above domain
'wensleydale' is a spam trap and is not read.

On Sat, 1 Jan 2005 01:05:50 -0000, "Jack Taylor"
wrote:

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!

Er, they'll start using 11 and 61. That's the whole idea - it'll last
a lot longer than the single letter system did without requiring a
change.

Neil

--
Neil Williams in Milton Keynes, UK
When replying please use neil at the above domain
'wensleydale' is a spam trap and is not read.

Sunil Sood wrote:

"John Rowland" wrote in
message

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?


However, I gather most of the extra space has simply been mothballed in the
past and is actually gradually coming back into use - now that developments
like xDSL and LLU mean that more space is needed in exchanges and the
distance from an exchange to the end user becomes an issue (before it wasn't
really a factor) - its also less likely that exchanges will be totally
closed in future because of this - though I believe there are still have
plans to close a couple of exchanges in Central London.

Aren't they renting out space to the other telecoms suppliers for their
local loop equipment?

"Stuart" wrote in message
...
However, I gather most of the extra space has simply been mothballed in
the past and is actually gradually coming back into use - now that
developments like xDSL and LLU mean that more space is needed in
exchanges and the distance from an exchange to the end user becomes an
issue (before it wasn't really a factor) - its also less likely that
exchanges will be totally closed in future because of this - though I
believe there are still have plans to close a couple of exchanges in
Central London.

Aren't they renting out space to the other telecoms suppliers for their
local loop equipment?

Yes, thats the "LLU" or Local Loop Unbunding to give its full name, that I
refer to above.

Regards
Sunil

In message , at
14:57:34 on Sat, 1 Jan 2005, Martin Underwood remarked:
Nowadays no buttons
are needed because the coin is automatically consumed if the call is
answered (equivalent to pressing A) and automatically returned (if not used)
when the handset is replaced (equivalent to pressing B). I'm not sure why
this functionality wasn't included in old callboxes: surely it wasn't
difficult even in valve-amplifier and relay days.

Almost certainly because the button A/B callboxes weren't powered. All
the work was done by pressing the buttons very hard. If it was necessary
to count coins, fore example on a long distance call, the operator (who
would be needed pre-STD) would literally listen-in and count while the
line was interrupted every time you put a coin in. When that money as
used up the operator would have to come back to you.
--
Roland Perry