Letter:Misuse of telephone network
Your support helps us to tell the story
From reproductive rights to climate change to Big Tech, The Independent is on the ground when the story is developing. Whether it's investigating the financials of Elon Musk's pro-Trump PAC or producing our latest documentary, 'The A Word', which shines a light on the American women fighting for reproductive rights, we know how important it is to parse out the facts from the messaging.
At such a critical moment in US history, we need reporters on the ground. Your donation allows us to keep sending journalists to speak to both sides of the story.
The Independent is trusted by Americans across the entire political spectrum. And unlike many other quality news outlets, we choose not to lock Americans out of our reporting and analysis with paywalls. We believe quality journalism should be available to everyone, paid for by those who can afford it.
Your support makes all the difference.Sir: It is just possible that I might wish to have a separate number for my telephone line and my fax machine ("Code chaos as numbers fail to add up again", 6 August). I might also wish to have a different number at work to that used by my friends to reach me at home. It may even be necessary to have a different number for my mobile phone. That being said then the national requirement for numbers amounts to five for every member of the population, say, 300 million numbers. This is well within the limits of the numbering range available prior to phONEday.
Why then are we again strapped for numbers? There are two reasons. When liberalisation was first introduced BT claimed that its exchanges were unable to discriminate on the entire code portion of the number and that therefore Mercury would have to be given separate exchange codes. This practice has continued and applies now not only to Mercury but to every cable company and to every mobile network. Every telephone exchange in the country is able to perform the necessary discrimination and there is no need to require people to change their number when they change their network.
The second reason is the desire of Oftel to retain the geographic significance of the area code despite the fact that this is already being attenuated. However, if we were to insist on the same number regardless of the network the geographic significance could be retained for some considerable time.
We are misusing our numbers, a scarce and precious national resource, for inadequate reasons and then compounding the error by selling "personal numbers", numbers that do follow the subscriber from network to network as a social facility when it is in truth a right.
JOHN RONAYNE
Telecommunications Consultancy
Bristol
Join our commenting forum
Join thought-provoking conversations, follow other Independent readers and see their replies
Comments