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Re: use of the plus sign

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On 01/02/2019 22.09, Frank Slootweg wrote:
> NY <me@privacy.net> wrote:
>> "Frank Slootweg" <this@ddress.is.invalid> wrote in message 
>> news:q31s3j.cg8.1@ID-201911.user.individual.net...
>>> NY <me@privacy.net> wrote:
>>>> "Lars Enderin" <lars.enderin@telia.com> wrote in message
>>>> news:72662561-2c3c-dc81-5b61-4622b13b7eff@telia.com...
>>>>> 2019-02-01 11:45 skrev  NY:
>>>>>> I wonder if there are any other countries which start all their 
>>>>>> national
>>>>>> area codes with a digit which *must* be dialled for calls within that
>>>>>> country and which *must not* be dialled for calls from outside that
>>>>>> country.
>>>>>
>>>>> Swedish area codes start with a zero inside Sweden.
>>>>
>>>> What advice is given to Swedish people about quoting phone numbers so 
>>>> they
>>>> can be dialled both from within and outside Sweden? Do they put the 0 in
>>>> brackets or do they list two formats of the number? I'm interested 
>>>> whether
>>>> they solve the problem in the same way as the UK does.
>>>
>>>  Same problem and same solution (0 in brackets) in The Netherlands.
>>
>> What intrigues me is that several countries (UK, Sweden, Netherlands, 
>> Israel) have the same issue of a leading digit which is dialled within the 
>> country but not from abroad, and yet none have done the obvious thing of 
>> reprogramming their exchanges so that if a call arrives at an exchange from 
>> overseas as opposed to another exchange within the country and the first 
>> digit after the country code (eg 44 of UK) is a zero, discard that zero 
>> before passing the rest of the digits onto the normal exchange selection 
>> code.
>>
>> That would mean that +44 01296 xxxxx and +44 1296 xxxxxx would be identical, 
>> and avoid all the faffing around with telling people to dial two different 
>> numbers (ignoring the extra +44) depending on whether or not they were 
>> calling from abroad.
>>
>> Apart from the one-off work of implementing that change, is there a 
>> fundamental disadvantage with doing it? I presume there must be, otherwise 
>> *surely* they would have done it by now. 
> 
>   I am probably (surely? :-)) out of my league and Carlos probably knows
> more about this, but this page
> 
> <https://countrycode.org/uk>
> 
> seems to imply that +44 0XX is used for UK toll free calling.
> 
>   If that's true, anyone with a 0[81|00|09|03] xxx.. UK number would be
> unreachable, when people would use +44 0... from outside the UK.

No, I did not know. I knew the numbering plan for Spain in some depth,
but not the British one. But I knew there would be a reason.

Mind, if they wanted they can re-plan the numbering, changing whatever
numbers would fail to some other combination. The decision is political
rather than technical.

For example, here at one point (1998?) they decided to mandate that all
numbers would be the combination of area code + customer number, having
to dial always the 9 digits even if it is your neighbour. At another
point, they decided to change 3 digit numbers like "004" (customer
service) to 4 digit numbers (1004). The next change was to make "00" the
international prefix - I don't remember what it was previously: 07? Yes,
07, found a source that confirms it. Also mobile phones that started
with 9 were changed to start with 6.

All those changes are costly. It is not only the change itself, but
instructing customers and then handling the mistakes and the angry
people :-)

-- 
Cheers, Carlos.

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Thread

use of the plus sign micky <NONONOmisc07@bigfoot.com> - 2019-01-29 04:47 -0500
  Re: use of the plus sign Andy Burns <usenet@andyburns.uk> - 2019-01-29 10:05 +0000
    Re: use of the plus sign Andy Burns <usenet@andyburns.uk> - 2019-01-29 10:11 +0000
      Re: use of the plus sign micky <NONONOmisc07@bigfoot.com> - 2019-01-29 06:55 -0500
    Re: use of the plus sign "NY" <me@privacy.net> - 2019-02-01 10:45 +0000
      Re: use of the plus sign Lars Enderin <lars.enderin@telia.com> - 2019-02-01 12:07 +0100
        Re: use of the plus sign "NY" <me@privacy.net> - 2019-02-01 11:54 +0000
          Re: use of the plus sign micky <NONONOmisc07@bigfoot.com> - 2019-02-01 10:17 -0500
          Re: use of the plus sign Frank Slootweg <this@ddress.is.invalid> - 2019-02-01 15:28 +0000
            Re: use of the plus sign "NY" <me@privacy.net> - 2019-02-01 16:58 +0000
              Re: use of the plus sign Andy Burns <usenet@andyburns.uk> - 2019-02-01 17:29 +0000
              Re: use of the plus sign "Carlos E.R." <robin_listas@es.invalid> - 2019-02-01 18:53 +0100
                Re: use of the plus sign "NY" <me@privacy.net> - 2019-02-01 18:05 +0000
                Re: use of the plus sign "Carlos E.R." <robin_listas@es.invalid> - 2019-02-01 19:59 +0100
              Re: use of the plus sign Frank Slootweg <this@ddress.is.invalid> - 2019-02-01 21:09 +0000
                Re: use of the plus sign Chris <ithinkiam@gmail.com> - 2019-02-01 22:08 +0000
                Re: use of the plus sign micky <NONONOmisc07@bigfoot.com> - 2019-02-02 00:21 -0500
                Re: use of the plus sign Chris <ithinkiam@gmail.com> - 2019-02-02 09:23 +0000
                Re: use of the plus sign "Carlos E.R." <robin_listas@es.invalid> - 2019-02-01 23:22 +0100
                Re: use of the plus sign Theo <theom+news@chiark.greenend.org.uk> - 2019-02-02 19:27 +0000
            Re: use of the plus sign Chris <ithinkiam@gmail.com> - 2019-02-01 21:58 +0000
            Re: use of the plus sign Piet <www.godfatherof.nl/@opt-in.invalid> - 2019-02-02 11:12 +0100
              Re: use of the plus sign Frank Slootweg <this@ddress.is.invalid> - 2019-02-02 18:04 +0000
              Re: use of the plus sign Andy Burns <usenet@andyburns.uk> - 2019-02-02 18:12 +0000
              Re: use of the plus sign "NY" <me@privacy.net> - 2019-02-02 19:52 +0000
                Re: use of the plus sign nospam <nospam@nospam.invalid> - 2019-02-02 15:23 -0500
      Re: use of the plus sign "Carlos E.R." <robin_listas@es.invalid> - 2019-02-01 14:00 +0100
  Re: use of the plus sign "Carlos E.R." <robin_listas@es.invalid> - 2019-01-29 13:20 +0100
    Re: use of the plus sign micky <NONONOmisc07@bigfoot.com> - 2019-01-30 07:51 -0500
  Re: use of the plus sign Chris in Makati <mail@nospam.com> - 2019-01-29 13:54 +0000
  Re: use of the plus sign Joerg Lorenz <hugybear@gmx.ch> - 2019-01-29 18:00 +0100
  Re: use of the plus sign Ralph Fox <-rf-nz-@-.invalid> - 2019-02-02 07:34 +1300

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