Talk:Telephone numbers in the United Kingdom

2003 area name changes
This section is definitely excessive detail for this article. What to do with it? Split it out as a 2003 area name changes article, or create a National Telephone Numbering Plan article and include it there? MRSC (talk) 17:02, 23 September 2012 (UTC)

Size split?
 Split  - Article is long, and should be split, starting with the History section. Thoughts? Suggestions? --Jax 0677 (talk) 16:22, 6 April 2013 (UTC)

I agree, despite it being a year since this suggestion. I just came here to do some research and the article is a massive sprawl of confusing and hard to navigate text. --Das Beta (talk) 17:59, 19 April 2014 (UTC)


 * I've carved off a large part of it into a separate History of telephone numbers in the United Kingdom page, but it still needs trimming.Polemicista (talk) 13:24, 9 April 2016 (UTC)

area splits
I read once that the split of London in 1990 was the first split ever; that all previous area code changes had been mergers, combining small areas with short local numbers and long area codes into larger areas with longer local numbers (adding prefix digits) and shorter area codes. Is that accurate? What kinds of boundary changes have been done since 1990? (The only one I'm aware of is the re-merger of London.) —Tamfang (talk) 18:21, 24 July 2013 (UTC)


 * There were splits of sorts many years before London where mixed charge groups were employed at first, then each group was later assigned its own individual STD code. When the STD system was devised in the 1950's, in general each charge group was allocated its own STD code.  In some areas a single charge group was comprised of two separate number groups, each with its own STD code, the common case being the "core & ring" arrangement of a city and its surrounding area, e.g. the 0272 "core" of Bristol and its associated 0275 "ring."


 * In some cases, however, a single STD code was allocated to multiple adjoining charge groups, most notably in much of Northern Ireland. For example, in the original plan 0762 was assigned to Portadown, but also served the adjoining Armagh, Rathfriland, and Dungannon charge areas.  The "D" digit (i.e. the next digit after 0762) of incoming calls determined for which charge group the call was destined, 5 for Armagh, 6 for Rathfriland, 7 for Dungannon.  Any other "D" digit meant the call was for somewhere within the Portadown group (8 for outlying exchanges as usual, other digits for Portadown itself).   Later on, separate codes were assigned for the three dependent charge groups: 0861 for Armagh, 0820 for Rathfriland, 0868 for Dungannon, and 0762 was reduced to serving just the Portadown group (Portadown remained the Group Switching Centre for the other three groups).  So the original 0762 territory was effectively "split" into four separate STD codes: 0762, 0861, 0820 and 0868.   This was repeated across the other mixed charge group areas around the late 1960's to mid-1970's timeframe.


 * As for boundary changes since 1990, the most obvious are those which created the new 02x range of area codes (after existing STD codes had the "1" inserted in 1995/96), with Southampton 01703 and Portsmouth 01705 merging into the new 023 area and the whole of Northern Ireland (numerous codes) merging into the new single 028 area.  PBC1966 (talk) 11:02, 26 July 2013 (UTC)

22 = AB
What does 22 = AB et al. mean?--92.17.15.86 (talk) 00:31, 2 November 2013 (UTC)
 * Good question. Two letters, often the first letters of the main city or town in the area, are translated to digits using ISO/IEC_9995.  A and B both appear on key 2, so 22 = AB for Aberdeen. Telephone_numbers_in_the_United_Kingdom has further details. Certes (talk) 12:50, 2 November 2013 (UTC)
 * The modern ISO standard puts letter "O" on the 6 and letter "Q" on the 7. British dials of the time had the letter "O" on the zero position, hence 0NO3 for Norwich (now 01603), 0LO7 for Louth (now 01507), etc.  Letter "Q" was added to the zero position of British dials in the late 1950's in anticipation of direct-dialed calls to Paris, France, since French dials already had the "Q" in the zero position. 91.125.207.231 (talk) 18:12, 10 May 2014 (UTC)

+44 70 International redirect
It's described on tons of anti-fraud websites how +44 70 numbers are used for international redirect calls. While I know it's as much about finding a good source (are anti fraud sites like Scamwarners or Joe Wein good enough?), then it should worth mentioning. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2001:878:200:1051:90F3:DC4D:7B34:EC13 (talk) 18:44, 6 May 2015 (UTC)

emergency services: mention of Mountain Rescue and Cave Rescue
The section on emergency services on 999/112 listed these as including Mountain Rescue and Cave Rescue. These are not in fact directly handled by the emergency services operator, because calls to these services are instead managed by the police, and callers are recommended to ask first for the police and then for mountain rescue or cave rescue as applicable. So in principle, purely from the point of view of describing the operation of the phone number, we could simply delete all mention of these two services. However, while recognising the fact that Wikipedia is not a how-to manual, lives could actually be at stake, and it doesn't harm to say something. So I've changed it to:

''... Police, Fire Service, Ambulance Service, and Coastguard. (Standard advice for Mountain Rescue or Cave Rescue is to ask the emergency operator for the police, who oversee the communication with these two services.)''

Sadly, the emergency operators are not always 100% clued up, and people asking for mountain rescue have been known to be put through to Fire and Rescue, which is not appropriate for remote situations, so just adds delay.

Regards, Money money tickle parsnip (talk) 01:42, 20 June 2015 (UTC)

New mobile numbers
It seems the section on mobile numbers is out of date. I've recently got a new UK mobile phone and been allocated an 073 number. The numbering plan at http://stakeholders.ofcom.org.uk/binaries/telecoms/numbering/Numbering_Plan_July2015.pdf allocates "071 to 075 inclusive and 077 to 079 inclusive" to mobile services on page 11, but I’ve not been able to track down any more detail. Could someone more familiar with the relevant documents take a look please? 81.174.148.17 (talk) 08:54, 11 October 2015 (UTC)

External links modified
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External links modified (January 2018)
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Problems with Format section
Firstly, the (uncited) table that starts this section has "07xxx xxxxxx" in the column "10 digits". That number format has 11 digits.

Secondly, the term "National Significant Number" is used several times. That link redirects to E.164, which doesn't mention it at all. —  Scott  •  talk  13:07, 20 April 2018 (UTC)

Source for 119?
Is there a source for the 119 Covid hotline added in https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Telephone_numbers_in_the_United_Kingdom&diff=954796876&oldid=954453730 ? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2A00:23C5:C106:8900:21BF:504:8ED4:82A (talk) 17:56, 11 May 2020 (UTC)

RfC regarding individual area codes
You are invited to the discussion at WikiProject Telecommunications/Area codes RfC regarding the notability of articles about individual area codes. Thryduulf (talk) 18:46, 17 June 2023 (UTC)


 * 204.128.182.23 (talk) 13:46, 16 May 2024 (UTC)