UK phone codes change again

The UK has entered yet another period of telephone number upheaval, as new code changes for six areas came into effect yesterday. The codes will provide additional blocks of numbers for fax machines and Internet access.

Households and businesses in London, Cardiff, Coventry, Portsmouth, Southampton and Northern Ireland will be encouraged to migrate to the new numbering system before next April, when the move becomes compulsory.

Groups such as the Federation of Small Businesses have protested the costs of reprinting stationery and redesigning corporate liveries - for the second time in under ten years, in some cases - but further costs come in the form of reconfiguring corporate PBXs (private branch exchanges), switches and routers.

Launching a campaign for what it calls 'Big Number' compliance, backed by all major UK telcos, the National Code & Number Change (NCNC) body said: "Those who've done nothing risk disruption to their communications, so they must act now to ensure this is kept to a minimum."

Although old-style numbers can be used for the next 10 months, the NCNC said businesses must check six areas, relating to phones, faxes and modems:

- call logging systems
- ISDN equipment
- call barring systems
- alternative network routing
- payphone facilities
- '01' fixes put into equipment for PhONEday changes in 1995

If these areas are not addressed, IT and telecoms managers could be faced with users who are unable to dial out, select preferred carriers, or access certain numbers, for example.

Mark Thompson, Nortel group marketing manager, said: "About 80 to 90 per cent of the work that needs to be done is on 'least cost' routing services and call barring. Some small businesses may be caught by surprise, but the general level of awareness has been pretty high as customers have now been through this a couple of times."

Full details of the changeover are available via the Big Number freephone helpline on 0808 22 4 2000 or at http://www.numberchange.org .