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The UK telephone numbering plan, also known as the National Numbering Plan, is regulated by the Office of Communications (Ofcom), which replaced the Office of Telecommunications (Oftel) in 2003.
Following the changes in 1995, 2000 and 2001, the numbering range in use is as follows. Note that the initial "0" of a telephone number (called the trunk prefix) is not properly considered part of the area code but is, rather, the national long distance calling prefix, and thus (for example) 023 is a "two-digit" area code.
It has been agreed by Ofcom on 27 July 2006 that soon companies will be offered to use a '03' geographic number as well as the '0870' national rate numbers.
Callers would be charged at the same rate as existing area codes which start with 01, or 02. This means that customers benefiting from 'free' minutes on mobiles or landlines would also be able to call these numbers. '0870', '0845' and sometimes the freephone '0800' numbers are not usually covered under such call plans.[1]
These ranges have subscriber numbers beginning with the digits '0' or '1', eg:
In order to avoid confusion with codes beginning with these digits, the area code must always be dialled, even from within the same geographic exchange. Traditionally these have not been used for inbound calls, although these are now being allocated to some Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) services. This has been problematic as some mobile phone operators in the UK do not allow access to these ranges, and there may also be difficulty accessing these numbers from outside the UK.
The 0500 range is used for some freephone services which were originally provided by Mercury Communications Ltd (now Cable & Wireless).
Individual mobile phone companies are allocated different ranges within the 077xx, 078xx and 079xx area codes. Changes to mobile numbers were mostly straight replacements, such as Vodafone customers on the 0378 block became 07778.
Since the advent of Mobile number portability, mobile prefixes can no longer be relied on to determine the current operator of a particular mobile number - only the original operator.
On the Isle of Man, both fixed and mobile phone numbers can be dialled locally in the six-digit format.
Although calls from UK landlines to landlines in the islands are charged at the same (long-distance) rate as those to geographic numbers in the UK, calls may be excluded from calling plans offering unlimited UK fixed line calls, and some mobile operators also charge more.
Ofcom has also reserved certain number ranges for use in television dramas and films, so as to avoid the risk of people having their telephone numbers displayed, and receiving unwanted calls. This is similar to the use of fictitious telephone numbers in the United States and Canada with the digits 555. In most of the large cities with three-digit area codes a range of numbers is reserved, usually all the numbers starting with the digits 4960. For fictitious numbers in other areas the area code 01632 is reserved; this code is not in use, although 0632 was used for Newcastle upon Tyne until the late 1980s (63 = NE). There are also reserved ranges for fictitious mobile, free and premium rate numbers.
Short codes beginning with 1 are reserved for telecom service providers' own functionality; some of the most well-known are codes for use with Caller Display:
The UK has two free emergency numbers — the traditional 999, which is still widely used, and the EU standard 112, which can be used in all member states of the European Union. Both 999 and 112 are used to contact all emergency services: Police, Fire Service, Ambulance Service, Mountain Rescue, Coastguard and Cave Rescue. The chargeable number 101 (10p per call) is being introduced in stages, with an aim to cover all of England and Wales by 2008, for "non-urgent emergencies". As of November 2006 however, it appears that owing to low take-up in trial areas this proposal is on indefinite hold.
The operator is obtained via 100, while directory enquiries, formerly 192, is now provided in the 118xxx range, e.g. 118 212, 118 800, 118 500, 118 118, by different companies. International Operator assistance is reached through "155".
Fixed line telephone subscribers for BT[1] , Virgin Media[2] and Talk Talk have the opportunity to use an automated messaging service which takes messages when the called number is either engaged ("busy") or not answered within a given time. This can be accessed by calling 1571.
Since the early 1990s speaking clock services have been available throughout Britain using the number 123 (before this exchanges in 'Director' areas (Birmingham, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Liverpool, London and Glasgow) dialled 846 (TIM) and main exchanges in Non-Director areas originally used "952", later changing to "80" with the introduction of STD and eventually to "8081" as other recorded services were introduced on 80X1 codes). Some mobile operators allocate other services to 123 - such as customer services or voicemail etc.
The Post Office even produced dial centre labels for use in advertisements and film/TV with a mythical exchange called VINcent plus four digits. The numerical equivalent of VIN was 846 and all the caller got was the speaking clock in the big city 'Director' areas.
Incidentally, the website www.telephonesuk.co.uk has a TIM2000 machine featuring the voice of Pat Simmons, who was for many years, the voice of the speaking clock. To hear, one can dial 0871 789 3642 (10p/min) or 01352 83 8081 (Free for many residential customers if geographic numbers are included in your calling plan - otherwise 8p daytime/4p evenings /1.5p weekends).
Two special telephone numbers within the regular code space have only eight digits, namely 0800 1111 the national ChildLine helpline, and 0845 4647 for NHS Direct medical advice.
The telephone service in the United Kingdom was originally provided by private companies and local councils. But by 1912–13 [4] all except the telephone service of Kingston upon Hull, Yorkshire and Guernsey had been bought out by the Post Office. The Post Office also operated telephone services in Jersey until 1923 and the Isle of Man until 1969 when the islands took over responsibility for their own postal and telephone services - although the Isle of Man remained part of British Telecom until 1987.
Post Office Telecommunications was reorganised in 1980–81 [5] as British Telecommunications (British Telecom, or BT), and was the first major nationalised industry to be privatised by the Conservative government. The Hull Telephone Department was itself reconstituted as Kingston Communications, in 1987; it was sold by Hull City Council in the late 1990s and celebrated its centenary in 2004.
In 1922 the first 'Director' telephone exchange was brought into service in Holborn, London and rolled out progressively across Greater London. A 3 digit code, represented by letters, identified the local exchange. Director schemes were gradually introduced in the other major cities of the UK--Birmingham, Edinburgh (although a relatively small city, it obtained all-figure dialling for political reasons), Glasgow, Liverpool and Manchester.
Subscriber Trunk Dialling (STD) was introduced in 1958 [7] to allow a caller to call another telephone directly instead of via a manual telephone exchange operator. Uniform exchange codes, usually called STD codes, were allocated for every exchange in the country, progressively as STD was rolled out. This process was not completed until 1979 [8].
The original concept was for STD to be a nationwide Director system, and in common with the Director system, the exchange codes were originally assigned based on two letters of the respective place's name and the corresponding numbers on a telephone dial. For example Aylesbury was given the STD code 0AY6, where the letter A can be found on the number 2 and the letter Y on the number 9. The letter O became a zero, such as for Bournemouth: 0BO2 where BO = 20. Originally, where a place's name began with the letter 'O' the code would begin with two zeros, such as Oxford: 0OX2 where OX = 09. These codes starting with '00' were later reallocated, freeing the prefix 00 for use by calls to the Republic of Ireland, to radiophones and to premium rate numbers.
For the Director areas a 2 or 3 digit code was used for the city. These were:
The codes 071, 081, and 091 were reserved for later expansion, with the former two eventually being allocated to London (see below), and 091 to Tyne and Wear and Durham.
The use of names was intended to provide a mnemonic for the exchange, but as more and more places were given STD codes the mnemonic link became more and more obscure, and this system became unworkable. The use of alphabetic exchange (area) codes was abandoned in 1966 in favour of all figure numbering. As such about 60% of current area codes are still based on the original alphabetic STD.
Until the late 1980s, calls to cities in the Republic of Ireland were made using short codes starting with 000:
Dublin 0001 Cork 0002 Drogheda 0004 Waterford 0005 Limerick 0006 Sligo 0007 Galway 0009
As the network was upgraded, direct dialling became possible to the whole country, but this was not completed in the rural areas until 1988. Until then, some calls from the UK to Ireland were made through the operator and diverted to the "Irish Service".
This was discontinued in the late 1980s, so that all calls to the Republic of Ireland from the UK had to be dialled in the international format using the international access code (since 1995, 00) and country code (353).
Although full international dialling is now used, calls from Northern Ireland landlines to landlines in the Republic are charged at UK national or local rates, and calls from Great Britain to the Republic are charged at a special "Irish Republic" rate, higher than inland rates, but lower than those for elsewhere in Western Europe.
With growth in second phone lines, direct dial-in (DDI) lines, fax machines and multiple telecoms operators during the 1980s the demand for telephone numbers exceeded the available number ranges. A number of changes were made to the UK numbering plan.
The first major change was in May 1990, when the London 01 area code was replaced with 071 and 081. Exchanges in central London used the 071 code with the remaining exchanges using the 081 code and formed a ring around the 071 area. Although this effectively doubled the available numbers it was not the last change for the capital.
On "PhONE Day", 16 April 1995, which was also Easter Sunday in Western Christianity, the digit "1" was inserted into all UK geographic area codes. Promotion of this day included special Easter Eggs. Under the new changes, for example, central London's 071 became 0171. This was with a view to reorganising the numbering plan, so that the first two digits would indicate the type of service called:
The international access code also changed on 'PhONE Day', from 010 to 00. Five new area codes were introduced for cities that were running low on phone numbers — and a digit was prepended to each existing local number.
Note that the first digit of the local numbers within these codes is no longer restricted to those shown: for example, while all pre-'PhONE Day' Leeds numbers migrated to 0113 2xx xxxx, this numbering range has since been exhausted, and local numbers of the form 0113 3xx xxxx are now assigned; similarly in Sheffield, the range 0114 2xx xxxx has also been exhausted and new numbers take the form 0114 3xx xxxx. This is also the case for Bristol, the range 0117 9xx xxxx has been exhausted. New numbers issued now take the form of 0117 3xx xxxx. Meanwhile in Nottingham, with the range 0115 9xx xxxx exhausted, new numbers issued take the form 0115 8xx xxxx.
On 22 April 2000 the second phase of the plan came into operation, dubbed the "Big Number Change". With 02* freed up by the previous reorganisation, it could be re-used.
Note that although Southampton and Portsmouth are one code from a code structure point of view, as of January 2006 calls between them are not local calls and the "codes" (023) 80 and (023) 92 are treated as separate by the BT site for determining local call area.
It is planned that the new codes will eventually cover a larger area than at present. For example, although 029 presently covers just the Cardiff area, it may in the future cover all of Wales. It is interesting that AW (All Wales) and CY (Cymru, the Welsh for Wales) are both represented on a telephone keypad as 29.
The code for Northern Ireland is 028, which can be represented by both BT (for Belfast) or AU (for All Ulster).
The transition codes for Northern Ireland are shown below. These can be accessed from the Republic of Ireland using either the domestic code 048, or the international code 00 44 28.
The prefixes for existing numbers in Northern Ireland are split up into 7 groups, roughly based upon the county in which the main exchange is based. The initial digit of each phone number is based on the designated county - for example, the first county alphabetically is County Antrim so numbers in this county start 2. The next county is County Armagh so numbers here start 3. One exception to this is the Greater Belfast area, initial digit 9, which is extended to include each adjacent former STD code area, including towns such as Antrim, Bangor and Saintfield.
In addition, mobile and pager numbers were all moved into the 07 range. Pagers moved into 076, while personal numbers moved to 070. Mobile numbers moved into the 077, 078 and 079 ranges. The exception to this was Manx Telecom mobiles, where the code became 07624 in order to match the 01624 used for landlines. In addition, lo-call and national call numbers migrated to 08xxx and premium rate numbers to 09xxx.
The number change meant that London returned to a single area code again (as in the old 01 days), with no "inner/outer" split. Existing London numbers acquired the prefixes 7 or 8, but from that point on 020 7xxx xxxx and 020 8xxx xxxx numbers were assigned or reused anywhere in the London area covered by the single (city-wide) 020 code.
From June 2005 the regulator, Ofcom, ceased to allocate number blocks to suppliers in the 7xxx xxxx and 8xxx xxxx ranges. From this date onwards all number allocations were in the 3xxx xxxx range and can be used anywhere in the London (020) area. Although new blocks of 7xxx xxxx and 8xxx xxxx range numbers are no longer being allocated to suppliers, those that have not yet exhausted their existing blocks are able to continue to issue and re-issue them to their customers.
Numbers in the 020 0xxx xxxx and 020 1xxx xxxx number ranges have also been made available. However, these numbers cannot be dialled without the 020 code and are called "London National Dialling" numbers.
It is a common misconception that London still has more than one area code (i.e. "0207 & 0208"). This is incorrect in the sense that omitting the "020" area code will give a local number that can be dialled from any other "020" line, so the commonly seen spacing 020x xxx xxxx, does not conform to the normal practice of separating the area code by a space.
This misconception of area code and number separation is also seen in other areas of the country where an area code reduction was seen due to the Big Number Change, such as Reading numbers still being written 01189 xxxxxx, whereas the correct number sequence is 0118 9xx xxxx, Coventry being written as 02476 xxxxxx, whereas the correct number sequence is 024 76xx xxxx, Cardiff 029 being written as 02920 xxxxxx whereas the correct number sequence is 029 20xx xxxx. See, for example, the Ofcom FAQ [10] (PDF file).
Creating numbers beginning 06, to replace 070 numbers - sometimes confused with mobiles - is also being considered.
At the moment, companies such as Patientline use 070 numbers. There is no cap on caller charges.
Ofcom wants 070 and 06 numbers to have a price cap, and 07 numbers to be used exclusively for mobile phones.
Under plans, rates charged to people calling 08 phone lines would be made clearer by linking the cost of the call to the third digit. Numbers starting 080 would be free, while 082 would be cheaper than 089.
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