Australian Phone Numbers
Hello Jetcone...
Phone numbers progressively changes around Australia between 1994 and 1998 according the the Wikipedia listing below though from what I recall, it took a little longer and there was a grace period where both versions of a number would work.
Sydney phone numbers used to work as follows....
Assuming that the local version of the number was 810 3523
From outside of Sydney but in Oz....(02) 810 3523
From overseas................................+61 2 810 3523
After the change they generally had a '9' added infront and there was no nead for people to dial the '02' if they also had the same '02' prefix...
So, to dial the same number
Locally or within the (02) zone....9810 3523
from Victoria (which is '03')....02 9810 3523
From Overseas...................+61 2 9810 3523
Canberra is in the same calling zone as Sydney now, but when my parents finished their house and had the phone connected in 1968, their phone number looked like....
1968 - (062) 81 6xxx .....it then became
1992ish - (06) 281 6xxx
1998ish - (02) 6281 6xxx which is now the final number as you would dial from outside the '02' zone
To dial Goulburn, which is 60miles away, they would have dialled (048) 21 xxxx. Now, because Goulburn has the same '02' prefix, they dial 4821 xxxx
Confused? Thousands upon thousands of particularly elderly Australians were even after a multi-million dollar advertising campaign. The biggest problem was that it was advertised as a 'change'. People generally react poorly to change especially when it is something like their phone number. Telstra could have minimised the impact of this by refering to it as 'updating' and ephasising how small the changes were to the user....
en.wikipedia.org