ECN Forum Forums General Topics of the Trade Non-US Electrical Systems & Trades Why 999 ?

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

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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... )