catj wrote on Dec 2
nd, 2009 at 11:00am:
A minor company will hold 10 000 numbers even though only a few dozen might be in use. With dozens of companies holding on to one or more blocks in every area of the country, everything is 'allocated' even though very little of it is 'in use'.
That's where it all went wrong. Numbers were previously allocated in 10K blocks per geographical part of a town or city. Nowadays they are issued in 10K blocks per company. This has led to a lot of wastage.
The proposal is to now issue those numbers in blocks of 1000. So for companies only using a few dozen or few hundred numbers in an area, they can immediately return 9000 unused numbers to the pot.
What will happen is that those blocks will be snapped up by yet more companies, and we'll be back to the 'everything allocated, with very little in use' situation within a few years again.
The "conservation" measures, this consultation and any other exercise Ofcom wishes to carry out are necessary because of one thing. That is, the fact that the issuing of numbers in the current manner is totally inefficient. It's not because there is more demand
from subscribers (commonly referred to as "consumers") but because of the way in which large blocks of numbers are allocated to providers who only need a few creating unusable wastage.
Telephone numbers are a shared resource and must be managed responsibly. To cut to the chase, continue reading from the "Improving efficiency of number usage" heading below.
This sort of thing really does infuriate me. Putting "conservation measures" in place as a result of the shared resource being used up with threats of having more number changes or an extra code (overlay code) in one particular area is shutting the stable door after the horse has bolted!
And then we have foolish journalists writing stories in national newspapers such as
Phone change for London as 020 3 becomes third code.
I'm not too concerned about the loss of the significance of locality of the first few digits within a local number. This still holds good for single BT exchange lines. For others, including those provided in large blocks, for example, for use in offices (i.e. for DDI purposes) there often isn't any significance of where they are within a particular STD area anyway, and this includes those provided by BT.
Improving efficiency of number usageMy thoughts on improving efficiency are that there needs to be a whole new way of allocating numbers. In general terms, I see two types of communications provider with different needs:
1. The main providers such as BT, Virgin Media (ntl:Telewest), Cable & Wireless and so on who operate the bulk of the infrastructure.
2. Smaller providers, typically those operating VoIP services or selling local geographical numbers for redirection.
The first group of providers require many numbers, and in contrast, the second group require very a few.
The large providers need to be able to have allocations of numbers which are consecutive for use with large telephone systems. Those with only a small number of subscribers in an area code should only be given a small number of numbers.
Of course, this all hinges on being able to implement a solution where small providers can have a few numbers, maybe tens or hundreds. What are the technical limitations?