Expect smooth move to 10 digits

By Nicola Mawson for Telkom
Johannesburg, 03 Oct 2006

SA`s switch to 10-digit dialling will not disrupt the market, say industry insiders.

In less than two weeks, local codes will have to be included when dialling local calls, a change that is in line with the framework of numbering convention recently introduced by the Independent Communications Authority of SA.

Telkom has indicated this may see switchboards being re-programmed. Spokesperson Lulu Letlape says companies that have barred international calls on their PABX system will be hugely impacted by the changes.

The systems will need to be reprogrammed to avoid users being able to make unauthorised international outgoing calls, she says.

Letlape also says customers may have to reprogramme speed dials, to ensure they are saved in the 10-digit format.

Much ado about nothing

However, voice over IP provider Storm says concern about the changeover is a "storm in a teacup". Product development director Dave Gale says the fuss is reminiscent of Y2K, which everyone saw as a "great monster that was going to kill us all".

"If companies have been caught with their pants down, they only have themselves to blame."

He says the move towards 10-digit dialling started two years ago and systems were updated at that stage to enable 10 digits to be dialled without hassles. As a result, only a handful of companies are expected to have to reprogramme their systems.

It would have been more of a problem, he says, if the entire country changed to 11 digits on Neotel`s arrival. The UK made this change a few years ago and it took it two or three years to get it right, Gale says.

Mostly a hassle

Systeque`s managing member Ian Pohl says the impact of the changeover is not expected to be a "train smash". Systeque, which offers services in the wide-area and IP-sec-based technologies arena, expects the burden on local companies will mainly be in inconvenience factors.

Pohl says many PABX systems already append a dialling code for local calls and those that do not should only require an hour of reprogramming. He adds that Telkom had already made provision for appending the dialling code onto a local call three months ago.

Companies that have barred callers from phoning international numbers will also have to reprogramme their systems to allow for ranges of numbers instead of barring any number longer than 10 digits, says Pohl.

World Wide Worx MD Arthur Goldstuck says the changeover will probably cause more confusion than extra costs as most PABX systems can already handle 10-digit codes and those that cannot are "hardly state-of-the-art".

He adds that the biggest problem around the changeover is a lack of awareness among the general public.

The new numbering framework boosts number capacity by 20% nationwide, which adds two million lines, ICASA chairman Paris Mashile previously said.