[asterisk-users] Not Dialing 9

[Gordon Henderson]

On Sun, 11 Jan 2009, Philipp Kempgen wrote:

> Gordon Henderson schrieb:
>> 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),
>
> If you require the users to always dial the area code then yes,
> that works.

With transport and communication becoming easier, it's almost essential to 
know & use to full 10 or 11 digit code in the UK now. It's required by 
mobile phones. (Certianly on O2, but I think Vodaphone might have 
knowledge of the local larea code you're in)

If I drive 25 miles to (eg) Plymouth and see an advert on a bus I'm 
intersted in, with nothing more than "Call Plymouth 123456" then they lose 
because I don't know the local dialling code for Plymouth to call them 
from my mobile...

Actually, the whole local thing is badly understood in the UK IME. Once 
upon a time I lived in a city which changed it's numbering scheme twice 
during my stay there - they changed the STD prefix, (0272 to 0117) then 
added a 9 to the local numbers. The last change was probably over 8 years 
ago, and still today people give their number a 01179 xxx xxx, when if I 
dialled xxx xxx from that city, I'd get number unavalable. (The dialling 
code is 0117 and local numbers are 9xx xxxx, 3xx xxxx, 2xx xxxx) It was 
more confusing when they opened up the 3xx xxxx range - people still 
thought they needed 01179 3xx xxxx.

That's just Bristol ... don't get me started about London!!!

(Oh and heres a bit of trivia about Bristol - one of the DID Wholesalers I 
use has the 3-digit prefix of 911 for Bristol numbers. So 0117 911 xxxx. 
Lets hope no americans need to dial the emergency services when staying in 
Bristol :)

>> 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.

so I have:

exten =>  _7XXXX,1,Macro(dialOut,01364${EXTEN})
exten => _XXXXXX,1,Macro(dialOut,01364${EXTEN})

Where 01364 is the local prefix for my area. This is fairy trivial to 
setup at install time.

My guess is that in the fullness of time, they'll prefix the 5 digit codes 
with a 9 to make them 6 digit codes. That seems a fairly common practice 
in the UK (prefixing with 9).

> Not so in Germany at least. Depending on where you live the subscriber
> numbers (the part after the area code) might be anything from 3
> (actually 2 for some PRIs but xx0 is the shortest number you can
> dial) to 8 digits. And they vary in length, even within the same
> local area.

My brother lives in Germany. He has told me it's somewhat challenging in 
places!

Gordon