|
Widespread UK telephone code misconceptions, in particular brought on by the Big Number Change in 2000, have been reported by regulator Ofcom since publication of a report it commissioned in 2004. Owing to the marked increase in demand for more and more telephone numbers to be available for allocation since the 1990s, the United Kingdom's telephone numbering system has been restructured several times on both a national and regional level, resulting in several modifications to the way British telephone numbers are written. As a consequence of these changes, many people were left with a misunderstanding of how the system of area codes and local numbers operates. The telephone area code for most of Greater London and some surrounding areas is 020, not "0207", "0208" or "0203". All London telephone numbers have eight digits, most clearly expressed as two sets of four. The London number (020) 7946 0234 can be dialled as 7946 0234 from any other land-line whose area code is also 020. A further study was commissioned in 2005 which found that only 13% of respondents correctly identified the 020 code for London without prompting: 59% incorrectly identified it as "0207" or "0208". Other affected area codes include Bristol, Cardiff, Coventry, Leeds, Leicester, Northern Ireland, Nottingham, Portsmouth, Reading, Sheffield and Southampton. The United Kingdom adopts an open dialling plan for area codes within its public switched telephone network. Therefore, all area codes have a preceding "0" when dialling from within the United Kingdom. When dialling a UK number from abroad, the zero is not included. Because of this, it has become common (but incorrect) practice to write the number with the 0 in parentheses, for example: +44 (0) 20 7946 0234. However, someone calling this number from the United States may mistake the trunk code for a single-digit area code, as NANP area codes are often written in parentheses, dial all the digits and result in a failed call. ITU-T Recommendation E.123 states that parentheses should not be used in the international notation, the correct format being +44 20 7946 0234. ==Background== A standard United Kingdom fixed telephone number (i.e. a landline, or geographical number, as opposed to a mobile telephone number or special rate non-geographic fixed line) is divided into three parts, the trunk prefix code (0 in the UK), an STD code (area code) followed by a local number. The STD (Subscriber Trunk Dialling) code indicates the geographical area of the number, and is dialled before the local number. For the majority of calls dialling within the same area, both the trunk prefix and area code can be omitted. Due to number capacity constraints, fixed line callers in Bournemouth, Poole and Christchurch (01202) must dial the full STD code even when calling local numbers. From October 2014, similar schemes were implemented in the following areas: Aberdeen (01224), Bradford (01274), Brighton (01273), Middlesbrough (01624) and Milton Keynes (01908). Some telephone service providers differentiate ordinary calling costs using the relevant area code(s). Until STD was introduced, only telephone operators could connect calls over the trunks (long distance links between major exchanges). A subscriber would have to dial 0 for the operator and then request a long distance call. As STD was introduced area by area the meaning of the 0 changed, and it was now the trunk prefix used to raise a call automatically to the trunk dialling level - what the telephone companies now call a National call. The new code of 100 was introduced for calling an operator. Thus, the 0 at the start is not really part of an area code, which is why international callers dialling into the UK must not dial it. The area code plus local number can have varying total and composite digit lengths, for historical and operational reasons, but as a rule they do not exceed 11 digits in combined length. For readability, and to distinguish geographic location, telephone numbers are often spoken, displayed and published with a gap between the area code and local number, and/or with the area code in brackets. Problems occur for the reader when this spacing or formatting is incorrectly applied by the publisher. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「UK telephone code misconceptions」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
|