[Talk-GB] Phone numbers in little England

[OpenStreetmap HADW]

On 23 August 2013 22:15, Paul Bivand <paul.bivand at blueyonder.co.uk> wrote:

>
> However, I normally ignore spacing because the concept of area code is dying.

There is a secondary reason for spacing and that is that short term
memory can only cope with about 7 things at once, so it is a good idea
to break numbers down into groups of less than 7 digits.  Outside of
London, that tends to happen with the technical breaks in the number.
You have to take account of the historical exchange codes (which are
still geographically significant, in most cases, to avoid an 8 digit
group, in London.  (It's why credit card PANs are in 4 digit groups
and why it is so annoying when websites aren't prepared to strip out
the spaces.)

The other thing about grouping, is that when I went through the
numbers already in +44 format, less than 5% didn't apply any grouping,
and more than 85% used the +44 20 xxxx xxxx grouping.  That's maybe as
much as 90% as most of the +44 (0) people would have put splits in
those places.

Incidentally, I did capture a rather unusual number for a local bowls
club, which was an outer London number in 7xxx xxxx format, on a
notice board.

Whilst most London people don't realise that they can abbreviated
numbers, I believe it is still common to miss the area code, once you
get outside a director area (although that might just be a
generational thing, with older users less likely to be using mobile
phones).