Send a boy – or dial it yourself?

Numbering for the information society

Ralph Adam
City University, Northampton Square, London EC1V 0HB
Email: ralph@city.ac.uk

Abstract Numbering and addressing are key features of telecommunications: without them,
the Global Information Society cannot exist. As the demand for new, and more innovative, serv-
ices grows and the world moves towards deregulation and competition, so the pressure on
numbering space increases. This article looks at basic numbering concepts and the role played
by numbering in information and telecommunication policy.

The descriptions we get of [the telephone’s]
use in America are a little exaggerated,
though there are conditions in America
which necessitate the use of such instru-
ments more than here. Few have worked at
the telephone more than I have: I have one
in my office, but more for show. If I want to
send a message, I employ a boy to take it¹.
The information society
Thus wrote the (British) Post Office’s Chief
Engineer at what was, perhaps, the start of the
information society: a time when library and
information systems were well-established;
postal, telegraph and telephone services were
available, the fax had been invented twenty
years earlier and the era of rapid communica-
tion of information had begun.
While the arrival of the printing press is
often seen as the beginning of the first com-
munications revolution, many present-day
commentators consider that the information
society will lead to even greater social, eco-
nomic and political changes.
spite its unfortunate name, POTS provides
important links: conventional voice telephony
(with interactive information services), fax,
email, classic dial-up online data bases,
Internet- and web-access, videotex (e.g.
Minitel and Prestel), electronic commerce,
interactive video and much more. The prob-
lem is that the old-style telephone network is
both under-utilised and, yet, too slow for mod-
ern communications.
As a result, all societies are confronted
by new challenges arising from the conver-
gence of information and communication
technology and the growth of multi-media.
Competition, liberalisation and innovation,
combined with cheaper telecommunication,
are seen as the spurs: especially for those ap-
plications depending on high-capacity, two-
way (broadband) technologies. Digitalisation
allows the transmission of both traditional and
new services (voice, data or graphics) by var-
ied methods. Some ‘old’ services using new
technology are:
l home banking, home shopping and voice

What constitutes the ‘information soci- telephony through the Internet;

ety’, and when it will be fully functional, are l email, data and web access through mo-

moot points: there are almost as many opin- bile phone networks;
ions on this as there are commentators. Only l online services delivered by web-TV or via

four years ago, a report quoted Rupert satellite or cable services³.

Murdoch, Wall Street analysts and leading
Japanese authorities as agreeing on 2020 as
the earliest date for its effective establish-
ment².
Most people in the developed world are
linked by pairs of twisted copper wires to what,
in specialist terminology, is referred to as
POTS: plain old telephone services. Yet, de-
However, in discussing these technolo-
gies one must keep in mind the degree to
which they are not available: over half the
world’s inhabitants has never made a ’phone
call, while two-thirds of telephone lines serve
only 14% of the global population, with 63% of
countries having no telecommunications out-
side urban areas4. And Manhattan contains

Aslib Proceedings Vol 51, No.1, January 1999 – 11

 Send a boy – or dial it yourself? Numbering for the information society
more telephone lines than the whole of sub-
Saharan Africa5. The boundaries of the Global
Information Society are the limits to which
’phone lines reach.
Numbering and the GII
While the elements of the information soci-
ety are hotly debated, little is said about the
‘cement’ holding it together. Every commu-
nication has a ‘sender’ (origin) and a ‘recipi-
ent’ (destination), linked by a ‘director’: rail
signal boxes, postal sorting offices, telephone
exchanges and Internet protocols all use rout-
ing mechanisms to ensure that messages
reach their destinations. For electronic com-
munications, a telephone line creates that
link: telephone lines need numbers – the for-
gotten element of the global information so-
ciety.
A telephone number is a humble, but
important, set of digits. It is a prime ingredi-
ent of any call: without it, there can be no
communication. And a telephone company
without numbers can have no customers. Yet,
how often do members of the information
world think about the origins of numbering
and its role in a sophisticated and competi-
tive environment? Very rarely, if the level of
debate on numbering policy is any guide. A
twenty-year online search of INSPEC pro-
duced only seventeen substantive papers:
less than an article a year – hardly a case of
information overload! Regular conferences
take place, newsletters are produced and
electronic discussion groups formed, but
their content goes mainly to numbering spe-
cialists.
This article aims to introduce basic num-
bering concepts and policy issues to a wider
audience, indicating their role within the in-
formation society.
Most of the examples relate to the United
Kingdom: Britain has one of the oldest, most
highly-developed telecommunications sys-
tems – notable both for its level of innovation
and the competitiveness of its market (cur-
rently with well over 150 licensed operators
and nearly 600,000 Internet host computers).
Also, the British situation will be familiar to
many readers. But, wherever you find tele-
phones, there will be ’phone numbers: the
Aslib Proceedings Vol 51, No.1, January 1999 – 12
issues and problems discussed here are, or
soon will be, common almost everywhere.
What’s in a number?
Few people are aware of numbering policy
until a change takes place – something which
is increasingly common. For example, since
1990, the code for central London has gone
from ‘01’ to ‘071’, then to ‘0171’ and, shortly, it
will change again to ‘020-7’.
Conventional telephone numbers have a
standard hierarchical structure, with a coun-
try code (e.g. ‘44’ for the UK) at the top and as
many layers as the national or regional admin-
istration deems appropriate. Dialling codes
give operators and users information on des-
tinations, routes, service types and costs.
Another category of ‘number’, which will
not be dealt with in detail here, is represented
by NSAPs: Network Service Access Points.
These can either encompass existing number-
ing schemes or have a bi-level format, with
ISO country codes at the top and nationally-
allocated (e.g. BSI) codes underneath. NSAPs
can be given to both public operators and com-
mercial organisations of any size6.
Thirdly, come Internet addresses. There
is, generally, a country code (such as ‘.uk’) at
the head, although some non-country do-
mains (e.g. ‘.com’ and ‘.edu’) exist and are
used mainly by US-based organisations.
These, too, have a ‘flat’ format, the addresses
being supplied to Internet Service Providers
or commercial organisations. Such Domain
Names, intended to make the system user-
friendly, translate (through a Domain Name
Server) to routing addresses: IP addresses
(e.g. ‘98.37.241.30’). The management agree-
ment for the registration of Internet addresses,
hitherto controlled by the US government, was
due to expire in September 1998. A new sys-
tem, allowing for competition in domain name
registration, and with a broader range of do-
mains, is under discussion7.
A problem with Internet addresses (web
and email) is that they are unstable (i.e. can
disappear without warning) and are not listed
in directories. One solution is Universal Re-
source Numbers (URNs) which can be linked
to email addresses, postcodes or other per-
sonal numbers.
 Send a boy – or dial it yourself? Numbering for the information society
Numbers as communication tools
The development of numbering
Telephone numbers were introduced as a
standardised shorthand for distant voice com-
munication through a human operator: it
saved having to provide the correspondent’s
name and address. In the early days, no one
imagined that large-scale numbering would be
required for global communication, nor that
vast quantities of telephone numbers would
be needed to serve sophisticated computer
systems. Now, however, the demand is so
great that France Télécom, for example,
claims it needs a million extra numbers a year
in order to maintain the present level of de-
velopment8.
Numbering began on a local basis, with
each town or village having its own sequence:
often only two or three digits. As telephone
density increased, numbers were lengthened
with the larger towns and cities going first to
four digits and then often being divided into
named exchanges with the first two or three
letters providing a mnemonic code with local
geographical references, such as CENtral,
ELYsees or WHItehall.
The introduction of automated subscriber
trunk dialling (STD) required codes. The Brit-
ish solution was to take existing place names
and abbreviate them into meaningful letter/fig-
ure combinations to create a relatively friendly
user-network interface. For example, Bristol
received BR2 and Brighton BR3, while Leeds
and Leicester were LE2 and LE3 respectively.
However, most switching systems recognise
only numerical information. Therefore, these
towns were actually treated as 272, 273, 532
and 533 – the digits in the same positions on
the dial (the initial ‘0’ in STD codes is an ‘es-
cape’ from local dialling to other types of call
and, therefore, not strictly part of the number).
Soon International Direct Dialling (IDD)
became available, producing more complica-
tions – partly because there was, at the time,
no international standard for the link between
letters and numbers on dials and keypads.
This, coupled with the exhaustion of mne-
monic exchange codes, led most countries to
adopt all-figure numbering. In Britain this was
done by converting to the numerical equiva-
lents of the letters allocated when STD was
Aslib Proceedings Vol 51, No.1, January 1999 – 13
first introduced. Hence, the apparently hap-
hazard structure of codes in the UK number-
ing scheme – for example, (0)835 is St
Boswell’s and (0)837 Okehampton – 469 miles
apart. Furthermore, as new services devel-
oped they were given whichever codes hap-
pened to be vacant: (0)836 was allocated to
the Vodaphone cellular service!
Nowadays, numbering schemes must be
able to cope with new and enhanced services,
as well as having some logic. One trend (es-
pecially in the US) is to bring back alphabeti-
cal elements – notably for ‘vanity’ sequences
that make words and cost more to obtain
(such as British Midland Airways’ UK reserva-
tions line: 0345 I-FLY-BM, or Forte Hotels’
number: ‘40-40-40’). Another is for schemes
to be ‘closed’, rather than ‘open’. An open
scheme has separate dialling procedures for
local and toll/trunk calls (with shorter num-
bers for local, i.e. the most frequently-dialled,
calls and an indication of the geographical
destination). Closed schemes have a single
dialling-procedure for the entire country or
region, usually with a standard number length.
Number length has become an important
issue: the ITU designated the end of 1996 as
‘Time-‘T’, the moment when the maximum
digits in the ‘international significant number’
should be increased from 12 to 15. Operators
claimed not to require the extra digits, al-
though Austria, Germany, Hong Kong and Fin-
land were already using them. Expensive
changes to, for example, switching equip-
ment, operational support services, and bill-
ing systems were needed and many telephone
companies have still not bought the necessary
equipment, leaving their subscribers unable
to dial numbers in the new format9.
Telephone numbers are also being elon-
gated through the addition of new elements.
Carrier-identification codes, are one example,
allowing users to select the company through
which a call is to be made; end-of-dialling in-
dicators, to assist electronic equipment, are
another. As a result, some US subscribers may
soon find themselves dialling very long num-
bers (up to 26 digits in Texas) for international
calls. Ironically, while Texans may have the
longest numbers, they prefer the personal
touch of a human operator10.
 Send a boy – or dial it yourself? Numbering for the information society
Where have all the numbers gone?
Since the eighties, there has been a massive
development of telecommunications services,
many of them information-related: the rise of
‘call centres’ and similar services using
freephone, shared-cost, premium-rate and
DDI lines (Direct Dialling Inwards, allowing
staff to by-pass the switchboard) are exam-
ples. And this is not to speak of Internet- and
web-related services. There has also been a
boom in other types of telephone need: fax
machines, credit-card validators and modems.
Mobile ’phones are everywhere and many
households now have different lines for each
member of the family. Portable numbers, new
entrants to competitive markets and the rapid
rise in remote-memory telephone card use
have all helped eat up numbering resources.
In addition, numbering schemes may be poorly
designed and wasteful of numbering space.
The number stock
Until recently, it has been a widespread con-
vention that numbering sequences are allo-
cated in blocks of 10,000 – a legacy of the early
standard format. First impressions suggest that
all the theoretically-available numbers can be
used. But, as a rule, operational, technical and
psychological factors permit only about 60%
of possible numbers to be allocated. There are
several reasons for this and, to illustrate the
point, Britain can be taken as an example.
Here, the format typically consists of the na-
tional prefix (‘0’), a four-digit STD code begin-
ning with ‘1’ or ‘2’, followed by a six-digit
exchange and local number – making ten ‘sig-
nificant’ digits in all. Thus, the present code
for Brighton is ‘(0)1273’, followed by six digits
(larger conurbations have three-digit STD
codes with seven-figures for exchange code
plus local number). A typical STD area has one
million potential numbers ((0)1xxx + six dig-
its). However, the following limitations apply:
1. no number can begin with ‘0’, the ‘escape’
from local dialling;
2. no number can begin with ‘1’ as this se-
ries is reserved for short access codes (e.g.
‘100’ for Operator, ‘112’ for emergency,
‘1471’ for Call-back);
3. local numbers cannot begin with ‘99’ as
there is a risk of interference with ‘999’:
Aslib Proceedings Vol 51, No.1, January 1999 – 14
the pre-1993 emergency number which
continues in heavy use, as ‘parallel run-
ning’ with ‘112’, the European standard
code, is still allowed;
4. blocks of numbers are reserved for com-
panies wishing to change to DDI, while a
separate series (e.g. ‘3’) may be kept aside
locally for future lengthening of numbers.
Also, changed numbers cannot be re-al-
located until a suitable time has elapsed.
Each category accounts for about 10% of
the possible numbers, thus giving around 40%
of the theoretical numbering stock as unus-
able¹¹. Furthermore, the need to allocate en-
tire blocks of 10,000 to an exchange can lose
another 20% of the available stock.
Broadband services
The term ‘broadband’ covers many types of
technology, but is generally understood to re-
fer to Asynchronous Transfer Mode (ATM). ATM
permits the use of signalling to establish on-
demand broadband connections and high
bandwidth packet-like switching, with number-
ing providing the link between the network,
users, support and billing systems6. Enhanced
cable or Internet services require broadband
links but the battle with satellite-based services
and narrow-band ISDN is far from over.
IP addresses
Internet telephony is increasingly viable and
work on standards well developed. However,
if calls are to be made between traditional tel-
ephone subscribers and Internet users, it will
be necessary to use conventional numbers,
as IP addresses cannot be dialled. Project
TIPHON, a study by ETSI (the European Tele-
communications Standards Institute) is inves-
tigating ways of overcoming this¹².
Non-geographic numbers
Information and other special services
The use of telecommunications as a (profit-
able) business and information tool has, in re-
cent years, led to the creation of many types of
non-geographic number: the code indicating
the type of call, but not its destination – the ini-
tial digits showing both network and caller who
pays and at which rate. Such services tend to
be Intelligent Network-based. For example, a
 Send a boy – or dial it yourself? Numbering for the information society
local-rate call from London, using British Air-
ways’ reservations line will be answered by a
clerk in Scotland during the day or by one in
New York at night. From the enquirer’s point of
view, the link is transparent and only the clerk’s
accent tells him whether he is through to Lon-
don, Glasgow or New York.
The main types of number used for spe-
cial services are:
Freephone
Here, the called party pays the entire cost. A
recent creation has been the Universal Inter-
national Freephone Number which, in princi-
ple, allows a caller to use the same number
from any country in order to access a service.
The debates on setting the UIFN standard were
heated: delegates from North America, where
the majority of freephone numbers are,
wanted to use their existing numbers, prefixed
by the Country Code. Representatives from the
rest of the world fought this on the grounds
that it would give the USA a clear competitive
advantage¹².
Shared-cost
Callers pay only part of the conveyance charge,
with the remainder, and any extra for the use
of Intelligent Networks, being covered by the
called party. The cost of a call is the same, ir-
respective of point of origin. Such services are
often charged at ‘local’ or ‘national’ rate.
Fixed-cost
These allow organisations, such as national
information services, to use Intelligent Net-
working to send calls to wherever staff are
available. The enquirer pays a fixed rate irre-
spective of actual destination, with the called
party paying the balance¹³.
Premium rate (shared-revenue)
Such numbers indicate that the cost of the call
will be above a certain level, with revenue
shared between service provider and user.
Telephone companies have traditionally been
much more concerned with how, rather than
what, they are carrying. Now, however, con-
tent has come into question and premium-
rate lines, which often carry recorded
messages, have increasingly come under the
spotlight for dubious content14 (as, too, have
online services15).
Aslib Proceedings Vol 51, No.1, January 1999 – 15
Standards for both international shared-
cost and international shared-revenue num-
bers are currently being finalised by the ITU,
although content standards continue to be a
national or regional matter.
Personal communications
Mobile telephone and paging services, for
which several competing standards exist, have
developed dramatically over the last decade
– especially in Asia and northern Europe. Most
authorities treat them as non-geographic, with
charging systems that are not distance-related,
and each operator having separate number
ranges. Numbering problems arise when
’phones are taken abroad – which country’s
code is to be used? An international code for
such purposes might prove a popular option.
Number mobility
Personal (‘follow me’) numbering. This allows
people to ‘buy’ numbers for life which can be
routed to any phone (for example, home, li-
brary or holiday cottage). Such numbers will
increasingly have added services, such as
voice mail.
Portability
Changing numbers when moving house or
telephone company is inconvenient and costly
(stationery must be reprinted, change-of-ad-
dress information sent out, fax machines,
modems and alarms re-programmed and calls
transferred). Number portability refers to the
possibility of taking a number on a long-term
basis from one place, or one operator, to an-
other, with significant savings and conven-
ience resulting. Such services are a key feature
of competition and can only operate where
there is a neutral administrator or regulator.
So far, three main forms have been intro-
duced: provider portability (for changing tel-
ephone companies), service portability (the
transfer of ‘enhanced’ facilities) and location
portability (when moving geographically).
The idea of keeping one’s number when
moving sounds attractive but, in practice, has
resulted in many political and organisational
issues – inter-company conflicts, disagree-
ments with regulators, accusations of anti-
competitive behaviour and pricing problems.
There are also disagreements as to whether
 Send a boy – or dial it yourself? Numbering for the information society
mobile and non-geographic numbers will,
eventually, become fully portable16,17.
Controlling the numbers
The role of the Regulator
The old approaches to national regulation, fa-
vouring stability and support for domestic in-
dustries to the exclusion of foreign
competition, are fast disappearing. In most
countries, pre-deregulation, number alloca-
tion was carried out by the national operator
or the relevant Ministry (the ITU performs this
role for the global scheme); in deregulated
environments independent, impartial, bodies
must take a wide view, ensuring conflicts of
interest (of which there are many) are resolved
and that well-designed, stable numbering
schemes, with effective consultative mecha-
nisms, are created (within the EU, national
regulators must comply with the Council’s
policy framework and the decisions of EC-rec-
ognised bodies). Thus, the Regulator should:
1. maintain a long-term view of the number-
ing scheme, foresee capacity shortages,
review needs and select the scheme’s ar-
chitecture;
2. consult all interested parties regularly and,
in these consultations, reflect users’ inter-
ests;
3. decide on, and publicise, the rules govern-
ing use of the numbering scheme: number
structures and lengths, ranges for use or
holding back, allocation to operators, har-
monisation, competition issues and so on;
4. administer the scheme: allocating number
blocks to network operators and with-
drawing unused or badly-used blocks;
5. set rules relating to other relevant compe-
tition issues, such as equality of access and
number portability;
6. resolve disputes between operators – over
number allocations, for example18,19.
In contrast with traditional telephony, the
IP environment is unregulated. Telephony over
the Internet raises new issues for regulators.
Companies providing the service will be com-
peting against conventional telephone opera-
tors, some of which will be offering it
themselves. Commercialisation of Domain
Name control requires a major revamp of DNS
regulation20.
Aslib Proceedings Vol 51, No.1, January 1999 – 16
Standards
Much has already been said about standards.
Current attitudes recognise that telephone
numbers are a scarce national resource which
can neither be ‘owned’ by individuals nor by
telephone companies (a major reason for the
separation of service providers and number-
ing authorities in deregulated economies). The
supply of numbers is finite – they must be con-
served with safeguards for future capacity
demands and new services, the need for
which may not yet be apparent. Furthermore,
plans for the future must support effective
competition by ensuring that access to num-
bering resources is equal for all service sup-
pliers.
Standards, always a key element of tele-
communications policy, have become an in-
creasingly important issue over recent years.
International standards are crucial for network
interconnection and manufacturers have bat-
tled to have their own products accepted as
de facto standards. However, in numbering,
the official bodies still have a key part to play.
The International Telecommunication
Union (ITU), is the UN specialised agency cov-
ering all aspects of telecommunications. Since
its 1993 re-structuration, the organisation has
had its own Telecommunication Standardisa-
tion Sector, known as ITU-T. This is divided into
15 Study Groups, each handling specific areas
(Study Group 2, responsible for Network Op-
eration, covers numbering issues), with ad-
ministrative activities carried out by the
Telecommunication Standardisation Bureau
(TSB). These activities are described in detail
by Channing²¹.
Although the make-up of ITU-T is such
that a wide range of views (especially those
of telephone operators, manufacturers, users
and regulators) is represented, it is the com-
mercial element that acts as the driving force¹².
There is little input from the information world.
Every telecommunications operator has
an obligation to route calls appropriately. The
international numbering plan, contained in ITU
Recommendation E.164, provides Country
Codes (CCs) of from one to three digits, in front
of national numbers. The emergence of new
states, and the consequent need for more coun-
try codes, has raised the possibility of recalling
 Send a boy – or dial it yourself? Numbering for the information society
all one-, and even two-, digit numbers. The
present arrangement allows for only about 80
more CCs to be created (the break-up of the
Soviet Union and Yugoslavia depleted the
stock). When a Country Code changes, every-
one has to adapt and the cost of informing the
rest of the world, reprogramming switches and
adapting information systems is high.
Deregulation and liberalisation have
brought important changes to standards, many
initiated by manufacturer-driven industry fora
‘feeding in’ decisions to international and re-
gional bodies, such as the ITU and ETSI. Con-
flicts exist between standardisation bodies: for
example, the ATM Forum (which bases its pro-
posals on the ISO’s NSAP addressing structure)
and the ITU (with a preference for its own
numbering scheme) have both made recom-
mendations on ATM addressing6. The two
groups are now trying to resolve their differ-
ences¹².
The present generation of standards is
seen as a foundation for a market, rather than
a technology, driven future²².
Harmonisation
This is a much-discussed topic and proposals
include standardising trunk and international
access codes, short codes and non-geographic
services. The obvious questions are: who do
you harmonise with? And who benefits?
The European Union has been trying,
with only limited success, to harmonise tel-
ephone numbers. Large countries can have
numbers of up to eleven-digits and it is hard
to make these memorable. Short codes of two
or three digits are much easier to recall and
tend to be used for information and emer-
gency services, but they differ widely between
countries. Current policy is to standardise
them (so that, for example, ‘112’, rather than
‘13’, ‘15’, ‘17’, ‘115’, ‘998’ or ‘999’, calls the
emergency services). Such numbers are, how-
ever, very wasteful of numbering space: up to
100 million numbers can be ‘lost’ behind a sin-
gle short code. A pan-European Country Code,
similar to ‘1’ for North America, has also been
proposed, but has been shelved due to oppo-
sition from both the industry and users.
New switching and transmission technol-
ogy have encouraged the simplification of net-
Aslib Proceedings Vol 51, No.1, January 1999 – 17
work structures and reduced the number of
exchanges, administrative areas, charging and
numbering zones. The relationship between
income from geographic and non-geographic
calls is also changing, especially in the USA,
where more than half of all trunk calls are
freephone²³: there is, consequently, a short-
age of freephone numbers, with operators
being accused of hoarding them.
And....what about the users?
Virtually everyone in the developed world uses
telephone numbers and IP addresses, yet user
studies are almost unknown in the number-
ing policy arena. Users’ needs have rarely been
discussed and few professional papers have
addressed the issue24. What is known of us-
ers’ preferences suggests that numbers should
be:
1. dependable – easily retrieved or remem-
bered, reproduced accurately and infre-
quently changed;
2. meaningful – standard lengths and uni-
form patterns and formats (e.g. 3+3+4 or
3+4+4 digits) are preferred, even if it
means dialling extra digits: the benefits are
increased user confidence and fewer
misdialled numbers. Long numbers are
impersonal and not user friendly: people
cannot identify with them as local features.
They are also less memorable (psycholo-
gists claim seven to be the optimum
number of digits for the average person to
recall25);
3. correctly received – numbers should not
be readily mis-dialled from other much-
called numbers;
4. consistent – the same for long periods
(even if the user moves and/or changes
operator);
5. recognisable – with easily identified codes
and giving appropriate information (e.g.
likely call cost or geographical location).
Users are not agreed on everything. Dif-
ferences of opinion can be summarised as:
1. having the numbers as short as possible
seems to matter much more to residen-
tial than to business users, or to those in
countries with long trunk dialling codes.
Business users often favour standardised
dialling, irrespective of destination;
 Send a boy – or dial it yourself? Numbering for the information society
2. the significance of special numbers var-
ies according to cultural factors: for exam-
ple, many people in Asia consider certain
numbers to be lucky or unlucky;
3. views on international harmonisation and
standardisation vary according to how
much individual users travel abroad or the
extent to which they have an international
outlook on life18.
Future developments should satisfy
some, at least, of these preferences.
One possible reason for lack of concern
with users’ needs is that professional groups
(administrators, engineers, marketers and
policy-makers), themselves, feel misunder-
stood by one another17!
Numbering and the information society
The aim here has been to give an aerial view
of numbering: too broad a topic to be encom-
passed in a single article. Key aspects can be
followed through from the references. Be-
cause numbering affects so much of life in
developed countries, the subject has been
presented in general terms, without specify-
ing in detail issues relevant to library and in-
formation work. Many such links are obvious.
There are, however, several areas which
merit further attention. One is the role of in-
formation professionals, key workers in the in-
formation society, in policy-making. Another
is the degree to which debate has, so far, been
limited to transport mechanisms, rather than
the data and information being transported.
This is rather like discussing library buildings,
without considering the stock held within
them.
Librarians in numberland
The information world has much to contrib-
ute to the, as yet, undeveloped area of user
studies. Numbering schemes are changed,
global numbers created and domain names
restructured, but there is little understanding
of what the GII is or what needs to be done to
fulfil the original vision. While it is claimed that
naming and addressing work should result in
a common understanding of the evolutionary
path to be followed in order to meet these
needs¹², where is the research on what users
need and want?
Aslib Proceedings Vol 51, No.1, January 1999 – 18
Also familiar to the information world are
those issues concerning intellectual property
(conflicts between trade-mark holders and
‘owners’ of disputed domain names or vanity
telephone numbers) and privacy (with respect
to calling-line identification, for example).
Documentation is another issue: how can
’phone books best be organised when num-
bers begin with carrier identification codes
which are, in effect, advertisements for tel-
ephone companies26? Or, how should informa-
tion on number changes be conveyed?
There are also areas from which informa-
tion professionals can benefit. Intelligent net-
works, allowing calls to be handled virtually
anywhere from a single number, could allow
inter-library collaboration in round-the-clock
enquiry services. The call-centre movement
(again, an unresearched topic) uses such serv-
ices extensively. In Britain there are at least
half-a-million employed in call centres which,
increasingly, use information scientists to raise
quality: one insurance company, PPP, uses
medical librarians in its call centres27.
Telecommunications have come a long
way since 1879, yet much remains to be done
in the development of numbering policy. But,
with the USA running out of numbers fast, and
Texans building longer and longer numbers,
perhaps the descriptions we get of the tel-
ephone’s use in America are not exaggerated
after all!
References
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