The Sad History of London's telephone area code

If you ask a Londoner what their telephone number is, there is a good chance that they won't know. I'm not talking here about the fact that we tend to move around a lot, or that people often get new mobile numbers, and don't know them for a while. I'm talking about landlines, and that when people even think they know their number, they often don't.

To give an example, you ask for a telephone number, and the reply is "oh two oh seven [pause] seven three one, five four one four". The pause here indicates the break between the area code and the number within that area. You will also see numbers written like this, for example 0208 6445667. But in fact the area code is 020 for London, followed by eight digits. So if someone within London asks your telephone number, the correct way to answer is "seven seven three one, five four one four," giving just the number, the area code being redundant. (According to research by regulator Ofcom in February 2005, only 13% of respondents identified the code for London correctly without prompting: 59% incorrectly identified it as "0207" or "0208".)

This may seem a trivial, nit-picking example, but there is more to it than that. The number following the area code does not have to be a seven or an eight, so many people are not in either of these fantasy area codes 0207 or 0208. There are already people with a three prefix after the area code, like 020 34567890, and the other prefixes are waiting in the wings. There are 10 million of the threes to be allocated, so they should last a little while. The implication of course, is that there are around 20 million existing London telephone connections!

So how did this bizarre situation arise? When I was young, the area code for London was 01, and an individual number had seven digits. In other words, there were approaching 10 million numbers. This wasn't enough, so British Telecom divided London into two areas, inner London having code 071 and outer having 081. This was shortsighted in two ways.

1. It only doubled the number of numbers
2. It did not consider that people may not want an outer London phone number

Next, they increased the code lengths to four digits: 0171 and 0181. This is a way to say more without saying anything helpful.

Finally the new system came into place where again there was a single code for London and an eight digit number. If your number used to start with the area code 0171, your new eight digit phone number would begin with a seven, likewise 0181 to eight.

So the end result? We have several results. In terms of numbers, we have added one meaningful digit and one redundant digit. For the area code, which is now 020, instead of 01, we are saying the same thing but using one more digit. For the phone number itself, we have multiplied the number of available numbers by a factor of ten, from ten million to one hundred million.

Another effect is that the geographic information which arose from dividing into sevens and eights has now been lost. You may have a number beginning with seven and live in an eight or a three area.

The effect on people, unfortunately, is that as I mentioned, many people no longer understand what their telephone numbers mean. When I tell people my phone number in the correct form, they often do not understand. Being me, I then try to educate them, ("a London number has eight digits, not eleven, etc.") rather than just say it incorrectly. It makes me wonder how much time is wasted telling each other phone numbers with those three extra digits, and the confusion they bring...sigh.

For a more thorough explanation, including the confusion within other British cities, see the article below.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UK_telephone_code_misconceptions

Footnote: numbers used to be specified by the local exchange (where someone would sit plugging in wires to make your call) followed by a short number. My grandparents used to answer their telephone by saying "Matching 367," even in the 1980s.