No. 18.... November 1995
Issued by the Oftel Numbering Unit
50 Ludgate Hill, London, EC4M 7JJ
Enquiries - Telephone: 0171 634 8758; Fax: 0171 634 8943
Numbering Bulletins are published monthly by the Oftel Numbering Unit.
The Director General has decided to overhaul the mechanisms used for numbering consultations. He intends to approve a new Telecommunications Numbering and Addressing Body (TNAB) - the body referred to in operators' licences as the primary means for consultations on the Numbering Conventions. He has therefore written to operators and groups representing telecoms users proposing that membership of the new TNAB should be as follows:
1. All public telecoms operators with conditions equivalent to condition 34(B) of BT's licence will be automatically eligible for membership, although anyone wishing to be represented by another participating member or organisation may nominate them.
2. All other licence holders whose licences contain numbering conditions and/or references to TNAB will also be automatically eligible for membership and the same rule will apply.
3. Others in the telecoms industry who have an interest in numbering issues, such as ISR operators, service providers and recognised representative interest groupings may apply for membership or representation. The Director General will retain discretion over membership.
The new TNAB will be convened at least annually at meetings arranged and chaired by Oftel. Interested parties who have not been individually notified of these provisions should contact the Numbering Unit here at Oftel if they wish to participate in TNAB.
To deal with specific issues ad hoc working groups will be set up. The first of these will assist with drawing up Codes of Practice for number conservation. The first meeting of this group is to be held before Christmas.
An informal Numbering Policy Advisory Group will also be set up assist Oftel in numbering policy matters and on the Review of the Numbering Scheme announced by the Director General in October. It is intended to comprise 15 to 20 members and to be balanced evenly between consumer groups and industry bodies. Those receiving the letter are asked to reply with any comments on the proposed structure and composition of these groups by 11 December.
Coopers and Lybrand have been appointed to work with Oftel on a joint study of future number demand in the UK. Results from this are expected by Easter 1996 and they will feed into a full Consultation on future numbering policy due to take place in the summer of of that year.
Oftel held a meeting in November with operators providing service in the Reading area to discuss the implementation measures and timescales for the code change announced by the Director General in October. The meeting agreed that the code change would take place on 1 January 1998 with parallel-running starting on Easter Monday 8 April 1996. New 0118 capacity would also become available from 8 April.
A publicity task force will be set up in December to consider the most effective ways to publicise the new code. It will draw on the feedback Oftel has already received from Reading businesses and residents about how they would like to be informed about the new code. User groups will be key to this task force and Sally Trebble of the Numbering Unit will shortly be contacting them to set up the first meeting.
From early December 1995 the complete List of the Specified Numbering Scheme will be available on Oftel's pages on the Internet as a series of tables. The tables will be updated monthly.
The S-Digit 1 tables will include two new fields: "Change" which indicates that a record has changed in the indicated month; and "Length" , which gives the code and number length associated with each DE block. The other SNS tables will also have a "Change" field.
The previous method of providing lists of changes on the Internet has been discontinued.
Further detail on how to unload the SNS from the Internet is given on the Oftel Numbering Unit home page.
S-Digit 1, Area Numbering Range
In this month's bulletin, only new Allocations and Reservations have been shown in the Tables at Annex A. Detail on other changes, e.g. Allocated to Protected, Protected to Free can be found on the Internet version of the Numbering Scheme. Such changes occurred this month due to:
- 59 DE blocks in the Edinburgh area have been Protected following withdrawal by BT of Short Code dialling facilities to adjacent areas. A similar change is being planned for Glasgow in 1996.
- over 1000 DE blocks, which were protected following exchange modernisation in the early 1980's have now been returned to Free and are available for re-allocation.
- about 40 DE blocks in the range 90 and 91 have been Designated to preserve options for future migration schemes.
- As a result of BT's rolling programme to replace the timeline service on 8081 by the 123 Access code, where these blocks have been returned to the Numbering Unit, they have been shown as Protected, and will be available for Allocation following a period of sterilisation.
- The withdrawal by BT of Short Codes (mainly in the 9X range), which will allow these ranges to be available as an option for migration.
S-Digits 4, 7, and 8
During the month over 650 Codes in S-Digits 4, 7 and 8, which were shown as Protected because of system billing constraints following PhONEday, have become Free. The details are not shown in the Tables at Annex A, but are recorded in the Numbering Scheme on Oftel's Internet pages.
Details of the changes to the Numbering Scheme during November are listed in Annex 1 and summarised in the table below:
Area Numbering Range
Allocations 53
Reservations 2
Other Changes 2486
Mobiles Numbering Range
Allocations 0
Reservations 2
Other Changes 167
Personal Numbering Range
Allocations 3
Reservations 5
Other Changes 178
Special Services Numbering Range
Allocations 4
Reservations 12
Other Changes 326
Access Codes Allocations 2
Reservations 2
Other Changes 0
Total Number of Changes 3242