10-10-2019, 10:11 AM
(09-10-2019, 05:24 PM)ppppenguin Wrote: For example I know of some numbers 020 8265 yyyy that are Virgin or ex-Virgin and are a long way apart.
Yes. VM uses fibre rings for telephony, dropping off at each cabinet on the way, where traffic for the local area can be removed from the data stream and outgoing traffic added before regenerating the data stream for onward transmission. These means that rings can cover large geographic areas some distance from the local headend because of the low losses of fibre.
The headend nearest to me when I lived in Ilford covered three London Boroughs! As numbers were allocated sequentially, adjacent numbers could be in different boroughs! All 020 8xxx numbers except for the third borough, most of which was outside the 020 area. These were allocated the local 01708 code.
Amie probably isn't aware of this but dialling codes originally comprised a zero followed by two letters and a number, the letters having a relevance to the exchange name. (The zero has since been supplemented by a following 1.) Thus, in the 01708 code above, 7 = PRS and 0 = OQ. It translates, in this case, to 01RO8, the RO standing for Romford.
Sometime when following a coach, say, with a phone number but no address on the back, on a boring motorway drive it can help to while away the time by attempting to 'translate' the code into something meaningful.
If the code was allocated after we stopped using letters, it won't work but my wife and I have a reasonable good success at working the older ones out!
