Phone numbers

Back by popular request, today we have guest blogger Mark.

After my last post about how wonderful New Zealand’s maps are, it’s time to rant about the need for standards in phone numbers…



Phone numbers. New Zealand suffers from short-sightedness when they introduced cellular telephone technology, and there’s no solution in sight. Here’s what I have managed to discern so far. They actually began sliding down a slippery slope even before they introduced cell phones, with their equivalent of American area codes. With only ~4 million people, they were able to divide the country into only 6 areas and use single digit area codes 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, and 9 (with 8 reserved for toll-free numbers). Calling from overseas is straightforward: the country code (64), the area code (3), and a 7-digit landline (ours is 338 7690). When they publish or say a phone number, it’s never the single-digit area code and the 7-digit phone number, but rather it’s always preceded by a 0, since 0 is the long distance access code (like “1” in the states). So we say our number is 03 338 7690. But for our friends in the states we have to say 3 338 7690...

Ok, so that alone isn’t a big deal. But then along came cell phones. Like many countries, they apparently decided to put the costs of calling a cell number on the caller, not the callee, so they introduced the area code 2 for all cell/mobile numbers. They never fathomed that there would be a need for more than a million cell numbers, so they only allotted 6 digits: To reach someone on a cell phone you dialed “0”, then “2”, then a single digit to designate the cell phone provider (ours is “1”) and then six digits, e.g., 021 123 456. Alas, a few years ago they ran out of numbers and had to begin using *7* digits, e.g., mine is 021 185 0410.

So now they have the following possible ways to report (or dial) a number:

3 digits for “special” numbers to reach the phone company, emergency dispatch, etc. (the NZ equivalent of 911 is 111),
7 digits for standard land lines (within the local area),
8 digits for that same line when preceded by the area code (when calling from overseas),
9 digits for long distance intranational *and* older cell phone numbers, and
10 digits for all newer cell phone numbers.

Oh by the way, they *never* use parentheses or hyphens in print (and sometimes they even skip the spaces). And there is *no* consistency in how they say the numbers – sometimes it’s 3 digits then 4, sometimes it’s 4 digits then 3, sometimes it’s 3 then 3 then 4, sometimes it’s 2 then 3 then 4, et cetera. They also never say “zero”, but always “oh”. And they usually replace pairs of identical adjacent digits with “double ___”. So our landline is “oh three, double-three eight, seven six, nine oh”. After a few weeks you get the hang of it – as soon as you realize that they throw a slight tonal shift into the last digit to indicate that they’re done telling you the number...

Finally, there’s one very special 6-digit number. If you want to call New Zealand’s Scott Base (in Antarctica), just pick up the phone and dial “oh two four oh double-nine”. Honest.

And if that’s the worst thing I can find to rant about…