JoeCz, can you confirm that the system is a Keycom one?

We now know that the outgoing number is a NTL one, so I think that we should be looking for the incoming NTL numbers.

You can try 0161 279x*** and substitute the x with all the digits between 0 and 9 you haven't tried thus far.

There's no easy way of saying this, but there's a lot of 0161 NTL prefixes, and they are (followed by change date):

0161 000 06/2000*
0161 211 05/1997
0161 212 05/1997
0161 213 05/1997
0161 215 05/1997
0161 217 05/1997
0161 218 05/1997
0161 221 05/1997
0161 271 06/2006 (F-digit 4, 5)**
0161 278 12/1996
0161 279 07/1996
0161 280 07/1994
0161 281 07/1994
0161 282 07/1994
0161 283 07/1994
0161 284 07/1994
0161 285 07/1994
0161 286 03/1995
0161 287 06/1995
0161 288 07/1995
0161 290 07/1995
0161 291 07/1995
0161 292 07/1995
0161 293 03/1996
0161 294 03/1996
0161 295 03/1996
0161 296 05/1997
0161 345 07/1995
0161 355 07/1996
0161 374 11/1995
0161 400 01/1998
0161 610 03/1996
0161 611 03/1996
0161 612 03/1996
0161 613 04/1996
0161 614 04/1996
0161 616 05/2002
0161 617 05/2002
0161 630 03/1996
0161 631 03/1996
0161 661 07/1995
0161 716 08/2002
0161 718 07/1995
0161 950 03/1995
0161 959 03/1995

I wasn't kidding when I said "a lot"! 

* The first number 0161 000 is a "national dialling only" meaning that the 0161 prefix must be dialled even from a telephone with a 0161 number. There has also been reports that these numbers can't be dialled from BT and some other providers. NTL (Virgin Media) and Orange are known to allow calls to be connected to these numbers. The purpose for "national dialling only" numbers is so that they can have non-geographicals (like 0870) pointed to them. It doesn't mean that this one is your accommodation's, it may be normal 'local' numbers.

** "F-digit" simply means the next digit in the prefix. In this case 0161 2714 and 0161 2715, so there's no point trying the f-digit as anything else for the 0161 271 prefix.

Going by the age of the system, I would try the prefixes that were allocated on or after 2000. That shortens your list of ones to try. It's also reasonable to assume that they only requested more prefixes because they had allocated (many of) the numbers in the other ones to end telephone users.

JoeCz wrote on Nov 3^rd, 2007 at 2:03pm:


07/1994 is the earliest date on any prefix (including BT), so I would take it that these numbers existed before then.

I'd definately try the later ones first. You might try each prefix and substitute the 'f-digit' (like I suggested with 0161 279) with 0 through to 9.

There aren't that many allocated since 2000, so I would try them with the last four (or three for 271) digits of your extension. Then I would go through and substitute the f-digit with numbers 0-9 which you haven't tried thus far.

Bear in mind that if someone answers (and this is true if you do it outside business hours) that it is probably not a business line you have dialled. That doesn't mean it is student accommodation, but those NTL (Virgin Media) residential (cable) lines are likely to not be part of a block of numbers.

For the student accommodation there is presumably a large block of consecutive numbers, eg 0161 234 5000 through to 0161 234 5199. A residential line needs just one number (not part of a group of numbers) and there's likely to be free numbers within those older prefixes. For this reason, if someone does answer out of business hours on one of those 2000-onwards prefixes, then make a note of it.

It's all detective work, ifs and buts. I can't say that you will definately find the number, but going by the assumptions I've explained here, then hopefully you can eliminate some of the less likely numbers.

Oh, I Googled those final two numbers as well (thinking that, if they ARE businesses, they're likely to have a website) but nothing comes back.

Salford University telephone directory
http://directory.salford.ac.uk/Full/UniversityAll.pdf

Looks like offices generally have five number extensions begining with 5xxxx  whereas the student accomodation numbers that I know in Bramall are four figure starting  1xxx.  Some of the extensions in the list show as 295 xxxx.  I tried a number of 295 folowed by student extension numbers either complete or with the first number substituted. No success with that, only connections were to offices in the university.

JoeCz wrote on Nov 11^th, 2007 at 12:35am:


Does this mean the halls extensions cannot be phoned from anywhere else in the uni apart from from other halls phones.  ( I believe that they do work between each other as I heard the guy on ext 1471 gets pretty peeved with the number of calls he gets! )

If they are accessible is there any clue in the access code?

I wondered if the residential extensions could be rung from other university internal phones (i.e. be accessed from elsewhere, hence be accessible) and if they can be is there a prefix code to the extension number which might  help us further.

There are a couple of numbers for administration extensions on the residential sites that use 0161 295  and 0161 832.   295 doesn't seem to lead to any residential extensions. 832 does ring on various numbers that I have tried, but the only answers so far have been fax lines.

Unfortunately I haven't the time to work through all the suggested codes with associated variations except by doing a bit at a time so I was hoping to find a short cut.