No. 23.... April 1996
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.
Issued by the Oftel Numbering Unit
50 Ludgate Hill, London, EC4M 7JJ
Enquiries - Telephone: 0171 634 8758; Fax: 0171 634 8943
The second meeting the Numbering Advisory Group was held on 19 April to continue its discussions on the Numbering Scheme Review. The group looked in detail at the issues associated with numbering for multimedia services and with geographic numbering. The work of the Group will feed into the public consultation on the numbering scheme taking place over the summer. The third meeting of NAG will be held at 2:00pm on Tuesday 7 May.
Press and business briefings were held in Reading on 2 April to launch the publicity campaign for the local code change which takes place in January 1998. Parallel-running for the change began on 8 April.
BT Local Number Changes
As announced in Numbering Bulletin No 21, Oftel has drawn up with BT a schedule for the migration of five-digit local numbers to six-digits in key areas. This forms part of the "number conservation" measures announced by the Director General in October and allows a ten-fold increase in amount of useable numbers in the blocks concerned. The changes apply to areas where number shortages are forecast if no further action is taken and is being linked, where practical, to BT's exchange modernisation programme. Details of changes occurring over the next 18 months, where BT has notified the customers affected, are listed in Annex 2.
01847
The mixed area code 01847 is split between the Thurso and Tongue charge groups, on D-digits 8 and 6 respectively. Most DE blocks behind D-level 8 have now been allocated. The D-level 7 is therefore to be designated for use after 1 April 1997 for the Thurso charge group in the event of more capacity being needed. (This will appear in the next Scheme update).
Numbering Information on Internet
Some minor errors were present on the codelist.zip file on the Oftel home pages early in April, subsequently amended in a reissue posted on the Internet on 12 April. Other minor changes have been made to the file sabc_de.txt to improve ease of use, more details can be found within the "read me" document enclosed with the file.
Users of Internet may be interested to browse the Warwick University Numbering Information Pages. This service displays Geographic Area codes, and lists the Operators against each DE block. This service is maintained for internal use by the University; no guarantee is given as to its continuation.
Changes made to the Scheme in the period February to April 1996 are summarised below:
Area Numbering Range
Allocations 640
Reservations 24
Other Changes 2531
Mobiles Numbering Range
Allocations 11
Reservations 0
Other Changes 0
Personal Numbering Range
Allocations 3
Reservations 1
Other Changes 0
Special Services Numbering Range
Allocations 8
Reservations 4
Other Changes 0
Access Codes
Allocations 5
Reservations 0
Other Changes 4
Total Number of Changes 3231
Number Portability Prefix Code Allocations 5000