[edit]by Dave:
This thread is now closed. Discussion on University of Manchester student accommodation can be continued on this thread.[/edit]

Hello all. I was just wondering if it was worth investigating the University of Manchester's halls of residence phone system. I am in the Richmond Park hall, where all of the numbers are of the format 0870 8399 XXXX . The service is run by Kingston Communications, so I don't know if this means they use VoIP or whatever. I could give you more details, but to be honest everything I know seems to be on http://www.accommodation.man.ac.uk/fallowfield/student/richmond.html .

Any help would be great, but I am not going to make a mission out of this (i.e. phoning up thousands of numbers) if there aren't enough clues available.

JC

~ Edit by Dave: Threads joined and title amended

Kingston trade under the name of Torch Telecom. By looking up the geographical numbers in Leicester, I've successfully found the number for the Opal Court accommodation at the university here. So hopefully they don't use VoIP in Manchester.

There are eight numbers registered to them in Manchester, four standard numbers, and four "national dialling" numbers. Unfortunately if it's one of the latter numbers, you probably won't be able to dial it from most phones.

Try these:

0161 615 xxxx
0161 636 xxxx
0161 638 xxxx
0161 822 xxxx

0161 134 xxxx
0161 135 xxxx
0161 138 xxxx
0161 144 xxxx

Reference: http://www.ukphoneinfo.com/search/Phones/oftel_cl_sab_161.html

Good luck, let us know if you have any success!

Thanks very much for your reply. I didn't know about the Kingston /  Do you suggest that I try the numbers with the same XXXX bit as the 0870 format? E.g.:
0161 615 3560
0161 636 3560

etc.?

I will give them a try at a nice sociable hour ;).

Thanks again,
JC

I see what you mean, I didn't read the University's page before. I thought the fact your 0870 number had too many digits was a typo!

The phones in the flats only have three-digit extension numbers in effect. You could try

0161 zzz 9xxx   using "9" as with the 0870 numbers

or

0161 zzz 3xxx      as the extensions are presented in the table.

Unfortunately you might end up having to try all ten leading digits, which will be tedious. But I'd try the two above first!

Hello

Does anyone happen to know the geographical numbers for the halls of residence of Manchester Uni/UMIST?

They are operated by Kingston Communications and have the format 0870 832 ****.

Any help appreciated  8)

~ Edit by Dave: Thread joined

ixent wrote on Feb 12^th, 2005 at 3:39pm:

Does anyone happen to know the geographical numbers for the halls of residence of Manchester Uni/UMIST?

Another thread on University of Manchester is here.  :)

I would suggest you try the following prefixes:
0161 134
0161 138
0161 615
0161 636
0161 638

Other 0161 prefixes that have been allocated to Torch (Kingston Comms) have been allocated since the UMIST system was put into place.

When I was a student there, all UMIST extensions (including payphones in student accommodation) were 0161 200 xxxx. They have built many new halls since I left, but these applied to Wright Robinson, Chandos, Grosvenor, Bowden and Ronson in the immediate area of the UMIST campus, plus a few others further out from the centre.

Even if all student rooms have their own phone nowadays, I can't see that they would have used all 9999 possible numbers yet, so there would be no pressing need to change (apart from the offer of some fancy bit of supposedly free kit from a supplier of 0870 numbers!)

Manchester University was less uniform, but many of its central functions and some student halls were 0161 275 xxxx. Many of the Fallowfield halls and sports facilities were 0161 224 xxxx

Unfortunately I don't know whether their phone systems have changed since I last spoke to anyone there (2002), but these may be worth a try. I have obtained answerphones this evening on some UMIST 0161 200 xxxx numbers which I still possess.

Graham

Please see my comment here:

http://www.saynoto0870.com/cgi-bin/forum/YaBB.cgi?board=news;action=display;num=1100291333#11

[edit]by Dave:
This thread is now closed. Discussion on University of Manchester student accommodation can be continued on this thread.[/edit]