please empty your brain below
Although technical developments mean that new 020 3, 020 7 and 020 8 allocations can go anywhere within the 020 area (and the code split areas don't precisely match up with the boroughs), the map is still useful as a basic Inner / Outer guide, especially as the Inner London area includes Docklands.
Refuseniks will also be pleased that this definition of Outer London excludes many countrified areas that were controversially swallowed up by the London boroughs way back in 1965.
071/081 > 0171/0181 > 020 7/020 8 have nothing to do with it at all.
The Post Office, technically Post Office Telephones, the ancestor of BT, always made its own rules for telephone numbers -- or, rather, it applied the laws of physics and electrical engineering that set the rules.
It was convenient at the start of the 1900s to put telephone exchanges in the middle of large towns, but technology at the time meant that signals over copper wire didn't carry more than a few miles. That meant you needed a new exchange every 10 miles or so. The coverage area of each exchange rarely coincided with boundaries.
In London exchanges were closer together because there were so many subscribers, but their coverage area still didn't match local authority boundaries.
At some point the PO defined the London telephone area, with numbers like GREenwich 1234 or ABBey 1234, and in the 1950s they all got the 01 code.
But that didn't match the inner or outer London boundaries. There are numbers in the London Borough of Greenwich which are based on the Dartford 01322 exchange. Yes Loughton, even though it is administratively part of Essex, got 01, and now 020 8, numbers.
Agreed, the 020 Inner / Outer distinction is based on different criteria, hence the 020 boundary swerves in and out of the London boroughs. It's just a useful rule of thumb that I like, the fact that an 020 7 number is more likely to be located towards the centre and 020 8 is more likely to be towards the periphery.
But the 071 / 081 split was highly relevant because the doubling of London's numbering capacity was concentrated on the busiest exchanges and in areas where rapid growth was expected. It's just another indicator of 'buzzing / backwater' and as (ir)relevant as any other Inner / Outer London parameter.
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