[asterisk-users] Not Dialing 9

[Gordon Henderson]

On Sat, 10 Jan 2009, Philipp Kempgen wrote:

> Thczv F. Thczv schrieb:
>> When I set up my Asterisk box at home I didn't want to have to dial 9
>> to dial off premises, so I gave all my local phones three digit
>> extensions with this format: 1[1,0]*.  My thought is that there are no
>> area codes that start with 0 or 1, so if I use those numbers, I can
>> create 20 local extensions that can be dialed with 3 digits, and not
>> have to use a timeout when dialing long distance.  If I dial 1, then
>> anything other than 0 or 1, Asterisk knows I am dialing long distance.
>>  If I start with any number other than 1, Asterisk knows I am dialing
>> a local or local toll call.
>>
>> This has worked fine for me (as far as I know).  Is there some flaw I
>> am not seeing?  I see a lot of small businesses that require a 9 to
>> dial out, even though they don't have very many extensions.  Couldn't
>> they do what I did and not have to dial 9?
>
> Generally speaking, it's impossible to get rid of the 0 (or 9 or
> 8 or whatever prefix) to get an outside line.
>
> It may work for some people with SOHO setups. (Although it should
> be mentioned that most of them make false assumtions.)
>
> As soon as the company has extensions of varying length or
> extensions longer than 2 digits (so they might as well be phone
> numbers in the local area - they are rare but they exist) or when
> we start talking about PBXs in foreign countries you can't avoid
> the prefix.

It's relatively easy to get rid of the prefix in the UK. None of my PBXs 
require you to dial 9 for an outside line, although if you do dial it, 
it's silently dropped.

We have 10 and 11 digit numbers here, but they're relatively easy to cope 
with. Shorter codes like 118xxx are easy to cope with, as are the lesser 
ones, 150, 151, 1471, etc. (just hard-code them in the dial-plan) You can 
even get away from the local prefixes by insisting that all numbers start 
with a zero - which is basically what you have to do with a mobile phone 
in the UK anyway (dial the full 10 or 11 digits, starting with a zero), 
and as incoming caller ID always gives you the full number, it makes sense 
to use the full number when storing speed-dials, etc.

Where I live, we have 5-digit local numbers (they start with a 7), and all 
others start with something other than 7 and are 6 digits long. Trivial to 
add in a pattern for, to add the prefix (01364 in my case) when dialling 
via a VoIP operator. (or to punt it out a BT line)

Some of my assumptions might well be wrong though, but they seem to work 
OK for me and my customers...

Gordon