I prepared this short explanation for a friend. As we have some telecoms-interested folk in ECN, I thought it might be of passing interest to post here as well.
------------------------------------------

The British 999 emergency system was inaugurated in London on July 8, 1937, and it's on record that the first call to the new service was made at 4:20 a.m. by a householder reporting a burglar (who was later apprehended).

Why the number 999? Why not 111, 222, or some other number? There are several factors which came into play, although I've never seen a full official explanation of the choice. Some of my thoughts on the matter:

First, in the 1930s it was still held by the GPO that no valid numbers should start with a 1. (The problem being that somebody fumbling with the handset as he picked it up would accidentally send a single pulse.) Level 0 in those days was reserved solely for reaching an operator. So that left only 2 through 9 as an initial digit.

As the emergency number was to be used right across the country, it had to be fitted into all existing exchange numbering schemes with the minimum of disruption. Outside of London and the other director areas, just about all exchanges at that time started assigning numbers from level 2, e.g. local numbers may have been 214, 2539, or 20340. When level 2 was full, they proceeded to levels 3, 4, 5, etc. Having a new emergency code starting with any of those digits would have involved major changes. In these smaller exchanges, levels 6, 7, and 8 were commonly used for accessing direct trunks to neighboring exchanges (this was 20 years before long-distance dialing was introduced, but in many areas subscribers could call neighboring local exchanges automatically).

So we come to level 9, which in the 1930s was already in use for many standard service codes, for example, 91 for general inquiries, 92 for directory inquiries, 90 for telegrams etc. Many small rural exchanges were operated as satellites from a central parent exchange. As operators were stationed only at these centers, many small rural offices were already arranged such that dialing an initial 9 dropped the caller into a trunk to the parent exchange. Thus the use of 999 meant that no re-trunking was needed at all those small dependent exchanges.

Another point concerns calls originating from coin phones, or "public call offices" as they were known at that time. GPO coin phones were the pre-payment type, and the dial was inoperative until money had been deposited. Except for dialing 0 that is -- The dials on coin phones had special sets of contacts so that 0 could be dialed to reach an operator without inserting any coins. The GPO considered it important that an emergency call could be made without coins, and it wasn't too difficult to modify the dial mechanism to allow both 9 and 0 to be dialed. Had the emergency number contained ANY other digits besides 9 and 0, the task would have been made harder.

Finally, there's the question of exchange codes that were already in use in London and the other director areas (those cities with 7-digit numbering). British 7-digit numbers were of the form 3L-4N (e.g. the famous number for Scotland Yard, WHItehall 1212). Director exchanges were equipped with register translators which accepted the first three dialied digits and looked up the proper routing code to the required exchange (e.g. if the first three digits were 723 the destination office was PADdington). As the digit 9 corresponds to the letters W,X,Y, there were no exchanges in any of the director areas using the prefix 999. Thus the translators could easily be arranged to route a 999 prefix to the emergency trunks. Some other three-digit codes in director areas were also reserved for "special" use, e.g. 364 (ENG) engineering, 846 (TIM) time, etc. (The latter being the reason why some people in Britain today still talk about calling "Tim," even though the time number has long since changed -- But that's another story!)

One final point is that by choosing numbers close to one end of the dial, it becomes easy to dial in a dark or smoke-filled room. Finding the 9 hole by feel alone is much quicker than trying to count forward or back to some other digit near the middle.



[This message has been edited by pauluk (edited 02-08-2003).]

That's interesting. In Austria all emergency numbers start with 1, but no subscriber numbers (Germany has normal subscriber numbers starting with 1). E.g. Fire department is 122, Police is 133, Ambulance 144, major automobile club hotlines are 120 and 123, time is 1503 (or if called from outside Vienna 01/1503 or 0222/1503, both area codes are in service, maybe there are time numbers in other major cities, probably the 9 state capitals). Many of these numbers are transferred to 05 area code now (local exchange tariff from all over Austria), train information used to be 1703, now it's 05/1703. I have no idea why the 0810 numbers are being replaced by 05. 0660 which used to be the same thing is now assigned as an UMTS cell phone code. Curious what they're going to do with 0662, the Salzburg area code which is lurking right in the middle of the 06x cell phone area.

Here's a long post

Ireland's numbering uses 1-XXX for special services and non geographic numbers.
----------------------------------------
Emergency Services (Fire/Ambulance/Police/Mountain Rescue/Coast Guard etc)

112 or 999 (universally available although 112 tends to override newer PABX systems and locks on mobile phones.. e.g. you can call 112 without a SIM card inserted) They're identical services. No local / individual numbers exsist for calling specific emergency services. 999 has been in operation for a LONG time and 112 is simply a mirrored service.

Calling 112 / 999 also causes a few other things to happen:
1) your line is traced (i.e. they reverse look-up the caller ID information getting your address/location)
2) you can't hang up on 999 or 112 until the operator hangs up. The exchange siezes the line.
3) All calls are recorded with the exception of specificlly sensitive calls passed through to the Police (for obvious reasons)
There is a specific Garda (Police) confidential freephone number if you need to report something annoymously.
--------------------------------------------
Assistance services:

10 - Operator (eircom)
114 - International Operator (eircom)

118XX (Directory Assistance & information services, provided by competing companies) Introduced about 4 years ago at this stage.

e.g. eircom's 11-8-11 (eleven eight eleven) provides directory assistance (either a computer read number, connection or number sent out by SMS to mobiles or SMS enabled fixed line phones), talking yellow pages, lotto results, traffic reports and a load of other stuff.

11-8-50 is the main compeditor.

190X (each phone company has its helpdesk number in this range)
-------------------------
Phone services:
171 (voicemail almost every line in the country has at least one mailbox provided for free/almost free.)
141 - block caller ID (prefix)
142 - send caller ID (prefix)
1471 - reads back last missed call(s)
199X (line tests) e.g. 1993 reads the line number back.
Other services start with *
-------------------------------------------
Special Rate numbers:

TollFree 1-800 xxx xxx
LocalRate 18 90 xxx xxx (eighteen ninty)
LoCall 18 50 xxx xxx (eighteen fifty)
1891 xxx xxx (special internet rate)
1892 xxx xxx (internet at local rate)
1893 xxx xxx (internet flat rate)

15 30 xxx xxx (most widely used 1550 "fifteen fifty")
to
15 90 xxx xxx (premium rate varying right up to about 2.50 (or more) euro per min.
-----------------------------------------

ComReg (the regulator here) is looking into abolishing the traditional (0XX) xxx xxx dialling system and moving towards a "closed" system with no local numbers.

Right now we have a very structured geographical numbering system that is far too complicated given the size of the country and the fact that calls are increasingly charged at one national (local) rate.
The country is split into 01 (dublin) 02 (cork), 04 (Midlands and East except dublin), 05 (southeast), 06 (southwest) 07 (northwest) 09 (west)
With numbers structured as below:
(01) XXX XXXX (Dublin)
(0XX) XXX XXXX (Cork and any areas that are re-numbered)
(0XX) XXX XXX (6-digit)
(0XX) XXX XX (5-digit) (most rural areas)
(0X0X) XXX XX (5-digit) (some rural areas)

08X XXX XXXX (GSM Mobile phones) (numbers can start with 0/1 no local areas) e.g. 087 123 4567 is valid. (Mobile phone codes are simply becomming 08 XXXX XXXX with no signifigance to the numbering fairly soon. Right now 087 (vodafone) 086 (o2) 085 (meteor). Full portability of numbers within that range is on its way.
5-digit and 6-digit numbering areas are being merged making them (0XX) XXX XXXX.

The idea is to eventually harmonise it to 0XX XXX XXXX then simply remove the leading zero so we end up with XX XXX XXXX freeing up extra capacity by releasing 1 and 0 levels in local areas.

I presume the tightly structured geographical numbering is a throwback to the old Crossbar & stepXstep switching systems. I presume that with modern digital systems numbering is much more flexible.

Unlike the UK, letter codes were never used here. It's just a hierarchy of numbers..

e.g. (095) 41 222

0 (STD call) 9 (west) 5 (area within west) 4 (townland) 1222 (number which also may have geographical signifigance e.g. identify a concentrator etc)

Callers can dial 095 41 222 or just 41 222 (from within the area) it makes no difference to connection/charging both work interchangably.

Some phone companies even accept calls dialled as 00 353 XX XXX XXXX from within Ireland.

Another strange feature is that some bills now seem to identify the place you've called.
E.g. if I dial 00 44 208 the bill will Say "Outer London" or 01 "Dublin" 021 "Cork" 00331 "Paris" etc.. They used to just print the numbers.

----------------------------------
Strange setups:

(048 = Northern Ireland. If NI number was 028 9021 9021 you would dial 048 9021 9021 from the republic (or +44 28 9021 9021) needlessly complicated but I presume it date back to the old days where they needed to route calls over the boarder rather than into Britain and back to Northern Ireland. Dialling 048 or 004428 seems to make no difference, they're both treated as "national rate" calls.

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.

Did such arrangements exsist elsewhere in Europe ... e.g. Germany - Austria?

The international access code was 16 for everything else. 16 44 - just got an announcement telling you to dial 03 and the british number.
--------------------------------------------

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.


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).]

Just in case there are any international members who don't know this , the American emergency number is 911.

It put the small town of Hayleyville, Alabama on the map as being the first place to implement the system in 1968.

Paul,

The shortcode for northern ireland seems to be only useful if you're calling from a private payphone. Everything else recognised 004428 as national rate.

Mobile phones also have a bit of a problem as you can't roam with 048xxxxxxxx you need +4428 and I presume +35348 doesn't exsist.

--------------------------------

Do you think that there is any advantage to scrapping local dialling and moving to 9 digit numbers in the Rep. of Ireland? other than just to give uniform lengths.

Right now there's a whole mix of lengths of numbers, similar in the uk i think?

----------------------------------

actually one other question..

I've noticed recently that when I call france from Ireland on an eircom line that the french ringing tone doesn't appear.. i immediately get an irish ringing tone! completely replacing the french one.

Same with calls to some US numbers.

Is this meant to happen or is it a glitch in the signaling? Seems like when the French / US system sends a signal saying it's ringing our local exchange provides its normal ringing tone. Actually makes a lot of sense from an end user perspective!

Paul,
Over here in NZ, the Emergency Number is
111, in Australia, it's 000, I think?.
It all relates, to how the old Dial phone
was set out, as in least time required to dial the required numbers.
The NZ system, blew this all out of the water, our old Dial system, went 0,1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9, in a clockwise direction.
Thank God, for DTMF keypads!.

>Thank God, for DTMF keypads!

That's why the European Emergency number is 112: Easy to find in the dark on a keypad.

I thought 112 was always the German emergency number?

112 also suited most countries as the code was generally free / easily cleared for emergency use.

112 always was combined ambulance/fire department emergency number in Germany, 110 is Police. In Austria 112 seems to be up, but I have no idea where it takes you.

112 is the only emergency number I know and have used. The old number was 90 000, but it was changed some years ago. The 112 was used for thousands of phone numbers, which had to be changed. Even today, the emergency operators get many calls from people who has dialed an old 112-number.

112 actually introduced to the irish system pretty flawlessly except for one slight problem:

Voicemail access used to be 121 a lot of ppl managed to dial 112-1 getting put thru to emergency services. Eventually they had to just move voicemail access to 171

-----

Ireland has a slightly strange set up vis-a-vis public voicemail. It's relatively universally and getting quite sophisticated (ability to recieve SMS and read them back if you've no SMS capable phone, send messages directly to other mailboxes, forward messages etc)

But the weird bit:

Mobile phones have always had associated voicemail numbers which you can dial from anywhere. e.g. if your mobile number is 087 999 9999 your voicemail is 087 5 999 9999

As of this year fixed line phones have something similar (until now the mailboxe nubers were hidden).. prefix the areacode with 03 and you've got the voicemail box associated with that line. E.g. 021 999 9999's mailbox is 03021 999 9999..

You can use call diversion from mobile/fixed line to send all your messages to whichever voicemail service you choose etc..

Dial 171 from any phone (fixed/mobile) and you'll get its mailbox.

Here it's 100 for Ambulance and Firefighters and 101 for Police. 112 gets you through to the 100.

112 seems to be the best phone number if you're dealing with a standard dial phone (rotary). You don't have to wait so long for the dial to spin back before the next number.

The city codes in the USA were implemented so the largest cities would have the smallest numbers: eg. NYC was 212. Los Angeles was 213 and Chicago was 312.

So when you wanted to dial to New York from...say Boston (614), you didn't have to waste so much time dialing the city code before starting in with the number. A city in Utah for instance would have gotten something like 804. Washington D.C. used 202.

Of course, cities have long since outgrown these codes. The venerable 212 is now only used for Manhattan and it has now been "overlaid" with 646...a combination that makes people think you're in Colorado or someplace where all these "new" area codes are sprouting up.

Now you have to dial the entire 10-digit sequence anywhere.

It used to be you would dial seven numbers if you were in the same city code. Now it doesn't matter. If you're in 212 and you want to dial another 212 number you have to dial 1-212-bla blah blah.

If you're in 718 (a New York City code instituted around 1982 for Queens, Brooklyn and Staten Island - now also serving the Bronx) you have to dial 1-212 to get into Manhattan and 1-718 to other numbers in these areas. 1-718 has also been overlaid by another area code.

The +1 indicates it's "long distance" (even if the call is inside the city).

I think the easiest thing should have been a split - with the older part of Manhattan (southern Manhattan) staying with 212 and the northern part becoming 646. But the regulators thought otherwise.

Sven,
Boston is actually 617 (area code 614 is in Ohio). And I realize you said "something like 804," but for the record Utah was actually assigned 801. (804 was given to Virginia in the 1970s.)

Another piece of area code trivia is that when the numbers were assigned back in the 1940s, codes with 0 as the middle digit were used for states with only one area code, e.g. 304 = WV, 602 = AZ, 305 = FL. Codes having a 1 in the middle were for states with more than one area code, e.g. 214/512/713/915 = TX, 213/415/916 = CA (Yes, California really had only three area codes originally!). The scheme didn't last long, because some states were split very soon after the original assignments, e.g. GA started as just 404, but had 912 added in the early 1950s.

For our European friends, let me also point out that the number 112 has been used in the States in the past in some areas. In quite a few small step offices it was the long-distance prefix in the early days of DDD. Those same offices also generally used other 11x codes for certain services, e.g. 113 for information instead of the 411 number used elsewhere.

DJK,
Several European countries have gone the route of abandoning area codes as such. Portugal now has 9-digit numbers which are dialed in full whether the call is local or long-distance. France has gone a similar route with effectively 9-digit numbering, although you have to dial 10 digits because the first is used to determine which carrier will handle the call (always an initial 0 for France Telecom). Norway is another place which now has 8-digit numbering and no area codes.

As Sven has mentioned, in those areas of the U.S. where overlays have been introduced, the concept is getting a little blurred as all calls need the full area code+number, even when calling within the same area code. (There has been a thread in Telecom Digest recently about whether the leading 1 is still appropriate now that no calls can be dialed as 7 digits in NYC.)

I'm not sure I like the trend. Where countries are small enough to go with a "standard" national 7-digit number, as has happened in a few Latin American countries, then it's not too bad. And even though DTMF dialing, memory phones, etc. are so common these days, I still think a lot of people will dislike having to dial 9, 10, or 11 digits for a local call.

I've not noticed that on any international calls from the U.K.

The common-channel digital signaling on overseas circuits means that tricks like this can be done though. Starting a few years ago, some carriers have been applying busy tone on the originating end. In the past, if you called a number which was busy in the U.S. you would always get an American busy signal from the office you were calling. Now, the distant end can just return a "line busy" code over the common-channel signaling and the originating equipment at this end applies British busy tone. It only seems to be some carriers doing it though.

Some carriers are also using the similar signaling techniques on calls to invalid numbers. You could call the same American number several times in a row and sometimes get an American intercept ("Your call cannot be completed as dialed...") and sometimes get dumped straight to a British "The number you have dialed has not been recognized."

As for your case of applying ringback locally, it would be interesting to see the protocols being used. Keeping the trunk muted and local Irish ringback applied until the trunk signals answer supervision wouldn't be too difficult, but it would prevent you from hearing any intercept recordings from the U.S. end (because they don't return supervision). I sure hope they thought of that and allowed for it! There'd have to be more detailed signaling passed over the CC circuit than just answer supervision.

I'm not so sure. For someone making his first faltering attempt at an overseas call I suppose it might be comforting to hear a familiar ringback tone. But for anyone else who is expecting to hear a French or American ring, I'd say it's somewhat confusing. They'll probably think they misdialed and are accidentally ringing a phone within Ireland.

In the case of the locally applied busy signal, I don't like it, but the TelCos would probably argue that the trunk can be freed that much more quickly for the next call. In the case of a ringback signal, any such argument doesn't apply because the trunk has to be held until the call either answers or times-out anyway.


[This message has been edited by pauluk (edited 02-11-2003).]

Having to dial the area code within Brooklyn is a pretty new thing, isn't it? When I was in Brooklin in 2001 I always got through with only the 7-digit number.
Italy has also switched to that weird system some years ago. It is pretty strange always to dial the 0 when calling from abroad (e.g. +39011 for Turin) The worst thing are the Telecom Italia directories though. They print the number as a 10-digit line, without any spaces or else.

I use the +46 for the phonebook on my mobile phone, as the phone doesn't figure out that 07... is the exact same thing as +46 7... I suppose my French phone is a bit more "international" than the German I had before

The number of phone lines are falling here as phones are replaced by cellphones. (The cellphone is cheaper as there is no monthly fee.) Anyway, I think the area codes are becoming less important. Previosly there was a difference in cost but the national call was dropped three or four years ago.

Now, if we were to give all of Europe a single area code: How long would the phone numbers be?

Assuming we need 1 billion numbers (that's almost two numbers per person), we would need 12 digit numbers. Then some people want special "area codes" for free and pay numbers etc. Add one digit: 13 digits.

(I was once handed a Russian phone number: 14 digits with the country code, the last four through a Russian operator. No, I never called... )

According to my information, the 347 overlay to area code 718 was introduced 4/1/2002 and mandatory 10-digit dialing has just commenced on 2/1/03.

You might like to have a look at Linc Madison's useful website. It hasn't been updated to include the latest changes yet, but it has lists of splits and overlays, and even a map showing the original area codes of 1947: www.lincmad.com

Another useful site is the World Telephone Numbering Guide site.

The longest numbers in the U.K. at the moment are 11 digits, including the 0 trunk prefix.

Many people are using alternate long-distance carriers with 4-digit access codes, so 15-digit dialing within the U.K. is becoming quite common. The U.S. went with the system of choosing your main LD carrier and dialing a special code only if you want to route the call another way, but here there is no such system, so if you want to use a certain carrier you have to dial the number every time.

C-H,
Not a single European area code, but the EU proposed an integrated system of area codes with a single European "country" code of 3 a few years ago.

Fortunately, the scheme was consigned to the trash heap (at least for now!) as being too complex to implement at the moment. They could have saved a lot of time and money by actually just asking any decent telephone engineer who would have told them to forget it before they even started!

I think it serves as an excellent example of why meddling bureaucrats shouldn't be let loose on technical matters they know nothing about!

www.wtng.info/wtng-reg.html#Europewide



[This message has been edited by pauluk (edited 02-12-2003).]

I don't know what eircom are up to exactly with the ring tone stuff it could just be a programming error on our local exchange.

They've been applying the irish busy tone for years! The only time i've ever heard a non-irish tone on busy was when calling a very obviously electromechanical area in Turkey ... old crackly tone with loud mechanical sounding clicking.

They do apply their own announcements on misdialled calls but also on number changes on very busy routes (e.g. +44/+1/+33) or very predictable changes (e.g france re-numbering to 10/9 digits)

One VERY annoying thing is that British (BT) numbers sometimes don't display. Is that a signalling thing? I've seen German, French, US, Canadian, Spanish, various scandinavian, Australian/NZ numbers all display perfectly as 00-XX-XXXXXXXXX on an eircom phone however our nearest neighbour's numbers don't display or come up as "number unavailable or just International"

I would imagine that it's just because BT (or the other British carriers) aren't sending the calling-number data into the Irish trunks (which quite possibly means they're not sending it on any international calls).

I never get international calls shown up with a number on my caller ID. The system just sends the "international" code, not even any indication as to country of origin.

By the way, while we're talking about caller ID, the U.K. also uses 141 as a prefix to block ID on a single outgoing call. If ID is disabled as your default setting, then you can release it for a single call with the prefix 1470.



[This message has been edited by pauluk (edited 02-12-2003).]

Similar here:

You choose wheather to display or not by default but can overide the default with the following prefixes:

141 to block
142 to display

i know some UK caller display phones won't work here either. BT reverses the line polarity to indicate that the caller id info is being sent..

eircom sends one long first ring to indicate caller display info is following..(US and French equipment we have works fine on it)

Still unsure how eircom delivers fixed line SMS messages to their ownbranded siemens DECT cordless phones. Any idea?

Sorry.... I have no idea of the protocols used on that one. Have you tried some net searches? There might be something available out there.