Telephone dialling codes to change again

Homes and businesses face telephone chaos when new dialling codes are introduced, it emerged yesterday.

Stocks of new telephone numbers in more than 600 areas will be exhausted within five years if action to curb demand from phone suppliers is not taken, telecoms regulator Ofcom has warned.

Ofcom has said additional dialling codes could be introduced to run alongside the existing four-digit local area codes when numbers run out.

New homes and businesses would then be allocated the extra codes along with any customers requiring a new landline when they move house.

Steve Weller, telecoms expert at uSwitch.com, warned: “If they start introducing new codes it is going to bring more obscurity for customers.

“A lot of businesses pride themselves on being very local to their community but if you just have a national number you don’t know where a firm is actually based.”

Ofcom has 265 areas with a number scarcity problem which means they are in danger of running out of new numbers within five years.

It says a further 336 areas may also run into trouble, meaning every UK four-digit area code, except those of Guernsey and Jersey, is set to run out of new numbers by 2014 unless demand is drastically reduced.

Ofcom blames telephone providers for worsening the problem by stockpiling large banks of numbers which they hoard and gradually issue to new customers.

It wants to slash the size of the blocks of numbers issued to telephone firms in an effort to slow the pace at which new numbers are used up.

Gareth Kloet, head of utilities at switching site Confused.com, said: “The issue of having such huge banks of numbers reserved for suppliers just needs to be decreased.

“The focus needs to be on the consumer, not on the provider.”

Ofcom also revealed it may allow BT to increase wholesale fees so it can help plug a £9.4billion pensions black hole. A change could mean BT raising fees it charges telecom rivals such as BSkyB and Carphone Warehouse for using Openreach, a wholesale service where telephone suppliers pay BT to run their phone services.

This could result in higher household phone bills if telephone suppliers pass on any fee hikes with 4 per cent seen as a likely figure.

Source: Daily Express, 2nd December 2009

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