UK Telecoms Come Up With Remedy for Number Shortage
Dialing fingers at the ready!
UK telecoms watchdog Ofcom has announced a proposal that could change the way people dial landline numbers. Ofcom's proposal is an effort to free up new phone numbers where supplies are running low. Right now, people making local calls don't need to bother with an area code when dialing a number. However, this means that Ofcom can't allocate local numbers beginning with a zero or a one. This new change, affecting residents in five areas, would see folks having to dial the area code when dialing a local number.
"The number of communications providers has increased significantly over the last ten years, leading to more competition and cheaper landline bills for millions of homes and businesses. But it has also led to increased pressure on the supply of new phone numbers," said Ofcom in a statement. "Requiring landline callers to use the code locally is intended to safeguard the future supply of new landline numbers and avoid the need for more disruptive measures, such as changing existing phone numbers."
Ofcom is launching a consultation on the proposal and hopes to implement the change on October 1, 2014. The watch dog says Bournemouth, Christchurch and Poole (01202) have been operating off of the new system since last November without issue.

Little old Australia switched to 8 digit local phone numbers 15 years ago. 10 digits if you call another state.
8 digits gives you a theoretical 100 million numbers (or 99,999,999 anyway)
10 digits boosts that to an insane 10 billion numbers.
That doesn't even look at the addition digits for international.
Good one. "follow"? LOL.
Last I checked my phone number was #-###-###-####....
Wow, how many numbers is that? And don't give me crap about the symbol...
Aus actually has closer to 1/3 the population of the UK.
With a 10 digit phone number, UK gets ~161 unique phone numbers per person, regardless of wether they are a newborn, or 100 years old.
Is that not enough?
contentsmayvary makes some valid points. Having lived in a variety of places
in the UK, from urban to an island village, I get the impression that for some
communities the ability to dial a local number without the area code in part
helps define their sense of localness, ie. it forms part of the culture, though
perhaps without their being that aware of it. More relevant to rural areas and
islands of course. On an island where I used to live, any local number is just
6 digits. I suspect if they had to start dialing the full 11 digits instead, there'd
be an outcry.
Mind you, it's likely a generational thing. Younger people who mostly use
smartphones will be used to dialing a full number most of the time anyway
(or they just use an icon or predefined hot key, etc.), so I doubt they'd
care much about any change.
Brits can be oddly sensitive about this sort of thing, or at least those
who are of greater age. We like to hang on to things that help reinforce
what is probably a false sense of localness, when in reality the world
has long since moved on. Mind you, this may be partly what makes the
UK so appealing to tourists, who knows.
Ian.