Re: Send-n, rat holes and real issues

Rosbotham, Paul wrote:

> Tell you what, I'll do that when you tell George Dubya to forceably migrate everyone onto IPv6  ;-)

Actually they did (sort of) all US govt backbones had a dead line of
June 30th to support IPv6 and to everyone's surprise apparently it happened.

> Seriously, though, getting a fixed length plan is a non-option.  The main fragmented range is 08.  That's because there's a mixture of legacy 0800+6 digit numbers, and newer 0800+7 digit numbers.  The industry tried to move to a uniform plan in this area a few years ago, and there was blood on the floor by the end.  You've got to recognise that large corporates have dedicated considerable advertising spend to building brands around their numbers, and they don't like to change.  Think in terms of the reaction if you went out and told every 800 number-holder in the US that they'd need to change their number...

Australia did this between 1995 and 1999 I think it was completed,
companies used to have 008 numbers but were forcibly moved to (+61)1800
along with all the other dial plan changes like 0055 numbers moving to
(+61)1900 and virtually every area code merging with all the other area
codes in the same state if not multiple states.

> There is a risk of this being characterised as a uniquely UK issue, though, which is not the case.  It's just we've got the biggest mouths.  Off the top of my head, similar issues would arise with complex variable length plans in Australia, Bangladesh, Belgium, China, Germany, Greece, India, Ireland, Italy, Monaco, Netherlands, Nigera, Pakistan, Poland, Portugal, Russia, South Africa, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland...  (this is using the criterion that it would take more than 50 lines to summarise the number lengths in the plan)

While you may be technically correct about needing more than 50 lines to
describe the dial plan for Australia, the majority of people and for
most routes that can be dialled internationally to Australia can be
summarised in a lot less than 50. For the most part this is all that
anyone needs:

61[2378]NXXXXXXX - Geographical numbers
614XXXXXXXX - Mobile numbers
61130XXXXXXX - Caller and Callee pays
6113ZXXX - Caller and Callee pays
611345XXXX - Security systems, shouldn't be needed for international
calls ever
61180[01]XXXXXX - toll free
61180NXXX - govt toll free
61190[0126]XXXXXX - premium rate voice services
6119[1345]XXX - premium rate SMS services
6119[679]XXXXX - premium rate SMS services

Actually out of the above list the main numbers called by people are
geo, mobile and 13/18 numbers, although I'm sure there is a lot of
calls/sms to 19 numbers based on all the ads on tv for different
services. However most VoIP/VSP companies won't touch 19 numbers because
of the difficulty in billing services.

While there is 82 routes listed on http://www.e164.org/wiki/AU_Dialplan
a lot of these numbers can't be called/used outside of Australia, eg 000
is emergency services (like 911 or 112 etc), 001X and 14XX override
prefixes for local, long distance, mobile and international calls, 019
numbers are charged at local rates but are data services for ISPs
usually, majority of the geographical route information could be
summarised instead of the way I have it fleshed out, I went through and
pulled out all the information about allocated numbers and that list was
correct a few months ago.

The 12X numbers are 'special' numbers like directory services and other
carrier things, and hardly any numbers in the +615.

-- 

Best regards,
 Duane