Yes, I was told that the party line system was about the most complex system ever used here. It prevented from over-hearing conversations. There was only one special issue: When the handset was taken off without calling, anyone who called could overhear the conversations in the room without being noticed. On single lines he/she would have gotten the busy signal under these circumstances.
I have no idea about the letter scheme as it was dropped long before I was born. I have a phone from 1949, but it has a newer rotary dial without letters. I think STD was introduced about the same time, but rural areas had operator based manual connections until the early 70ies. With the area codes they messed around a lot. In the last 15 years nearly everything changed. If you get a phone number that is older than 10 years cou can be almost sure it won't work any more, because during the exchange to digital system everyone's phone number was changed. Some area codes remained, but for example Vienna was changed from 0222 to 01 a few years ago. There were also special short area codes in some areas, for example from Baden to Wien (about 20 km or less) it was 9 (I think), though I'm not sure as I never used them, and they all started with 9.
The 112 number is not yet implemented, our emergency numbers are 122 for fire department, 133 for police and 144 for ambulance.There are some more of those 1.. numbers, for example the automobile clubs have special emergency lines. Numbers for information, service hotline (we have a special hotline to report numbers that doesn't work, broken phones owned by the company, ... With Telekom Austria in Vienna 11120) have changed so often I always need to look them up.
Some words about directories here. There are directories for every one of our 9 states, bigger states like lower Austria have more than one, for example Lower Austria north-east, LO north-west, LO south-east and LO south-west. Bigger cities have their own directory. The Vienna directory once consisted of four yellow A4 size, 2" thick books, white pages A-H, I-Q and R-Z, and yellow pages. Now They took thinner paper and print smaller, so we've only got A-L, M-Z and yellow pages.
Normally your number, with full name, title and address shows up in the directory, but you can pay extra money every year for having it not show up. Those numbers are called "secret numbers". Another viennese speciality is that you'll rarely find a company by their company name in the directory. You'll probably find it under the former owner's grandfather's name or something like that. Sometimes we make jokes about the companies, that they don't want to be found.
We have 5 mobile phone networks at the moment, 4 GSM, 1 analog ETACS, will be shut down on February 1st. Thats's a real pity, it's far the cheapest, and the used phones come for about $10 in excellent shape. The STD codes are: analog D-Net 0663 + 6/7 digit number, A1(fomerly E-Net) 0664 + 7-digit-number (owned by the same company, former monopolyst) max. 0676 + 7-digit-number, ONE 0699 + 8-digit-number and TeleRing 0650 + 7-digit-number. Ther were some other networks, for example the A-net, operator-based car phone network, no idea when it was shut down, The B-Net, also car phone, for the STD you had to know where the person wasfor example I think Vienna area was 02225. Then there was the C-Net, cellular car phone network, STD 0663 and a 5-digit number, shut down in 1997.
At least in Vienna we have an area numbering scheme. When you see a number a number you can tell by the first 2 or three digits where in Vienna the subscriber is located, for example numbers starting with 51 are downtown, numberst starting with 2 are somewhere on the end of the world, across the danube. However, this is only practised by Telekom. Alternative companies usually provide numbers starting with 9, In Vienna this would be Priority Telekom with 92, 93?, 94, 96 and 97 numbers spread all over Vienna.
