Reallocation of Telephone Number

[YOUNGCODGER]

Hi,

I was wondering if there was a minimum period (am located in UK) before a telephone number, either landline or mobile, can be reallocated. Currently it seems that mobiles never are (I have numbers that contacts gave up years ago and none are live) but some landlines are reallocated with undue haste.

Regards,

YoungCodger

 

[Crowtalks]

In the US, number blocks are sold to Telephone companys on a justifiable need basis (according to the number of lines they have), therefore they have a limited supply of telephone numbers to work with.

Because of that, each company determines how long it will retire a number before reissuing it to another customer.

It may be the same in the UK...

NCSS NCTS NCTE

 

[IPGuru]

As far as I am aware BT try to wait at least 6 months before re-issuing a number. I do not know if this is a hard fast rule or if other providers have a different policy.

 

[donb01]

This is not a provider policy, but some of my practices. I work in a healthcare network of several sites and have about 5000 contiguous numbers, which was an interesting experience in itself. I have found that when certain functions cease to exist or move to a different building and have a number change I need to keep those numbers out of service for 1 - 2 years before I reuse them. On the other hand I have primary department numbers, like Human Resources, that have moved and had number changes and people are STILL calling those numbers 10 years later! I have to leave them unassigned so they ring in to the central switchboard, and then they forward them.

With the number crunch I'm sure the carriers don't have that luxury, but as a customer I would hope you could get a clean number upon request, or at least one that has been out of service for a year minimum )

 

[YOUNGCODGER]

I was wondering if there was a legal minimum (searched Ofcom's web site to no avail). Someone I know got allocated a former mini cab number after six months and got some calls from occasional users for quite a while. More recently I heard of one that was reallocated in weeks!