Quote
In Austria all emergency numbers start with 1, but no subscriber numbers (Germany has normal subscriber numbers starting with 1).

Level 1 came into use in later years in the British system, e.g. the 91 and 92 service codes became 191 and 192, the latter still being the standard number for directory assistance today (although the 118xx alternate information providers have just been introduced here as well).

When STD (Subscriber Trunk Dialing, equivalent to American DDD) came in in the 1950s, level 0 was changed to the long-distance prefix and the number for the general operator changed to 100 (still used today). Other level 1 codes were assigned over the years, such as 151 for engineering and 17x codes for many engineering tests (ringback, cable pair ID, etc. These days whole batches of 1xxx codes are used for accessing alternate long-distance carriers, in much the same way as the 10xxx codes in the States.


Quote
Until the early 90's you simply dialled 03 followed by the British area code (including zero) to dial the UK
e.g. Manchester was just 03051. I think similar STD arangements exsisted for calling parts of the republic of ireland from the UK.
Actually, 03051 would have gotten you Liverpool. Manchester STD code was 061.

Yes, there were 000x codes for dialing into various Irish cities, e.g. 0001 for Dublin.

The Irish 048 code for dialing N.I. was introduced only recently when N.I. numbers went to 8 digits under a single area code. Under the old system, you reached N.I. with 08 plus the British STD code, e.g. 080232 for Belfast.

In pre-digital days, that kludge no doubt simplified routing and charging equipment setups. Remember that calls to N.I. from south of the border are charged only at normal Irish rates, not the same as an overseas call to the mainland U.K.

Several small European countries were closely tied to the system of a larger neighbor, e.g. Andorra/France, Liechtenstein/Switzerland.

The North American system was a little different because it covered more than just one country from the outset, but a "work around" was added by using two spare area codes for dialing into parts of Mexico, which isn't part of the North American numbering area.



[This message has been edited by pauluk (edited 02-09-2003).]