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> It's not long enough to be a London telephone number, and, today, I think London numbers start with 020.

I used to work with telephony until 2011. While I worked in Sweden, I am sure this applies for UK, too.

There is no standard in phone number lengths, you can have all sorts of prefixed series, so for example if the area code is "1", then the number 0 could be routed to a destination.

So 04410 is theoretically valid.

Back then we even had 3-digit short form numbers (like 911) that we had to specifically deal with each phone operator for keeping.

It was used for pricey phone dating.




Except in the US, and a handful of other countries who do have fixed length numbering plans.


Was it always like that? The record was released in 1982.

I know in my part of the world we went from 2-digit local numbers to 3-4-5 digits, to 8 or 10 digits over a century.

My point being this is simply routing implementation details. Even USA has 911 for example.


I looked at a London telephone book from 1979, when I think the record was released.

Most of the phone numbers were something like 01 361 1234, i.e. seven digits after the 01 area code. The _361_ part was bold, so I think that was an exchange number.

A few numbers were something like "Placename 12345". Wikipedia explains why that was.




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