Ann leads numbers-only phone drive
The Post Office has launched ANN, All-figure Numbering NOW, to persuade people to forget the old letter-code phone numbers and start using numbers only.
And a girl known simply as Ann will appear on posters advertising the switch to All Figure Numbering (AFN) in six big cities.
London, Birmingham, Manchester, Liverpool, Glasgow and Edinburgh are now in the final stages of the change to All-Figure Numbering. Conversion of phone directories and dialling instruction to AFN is almost complete. From now on, new phones will have number-only dials.
In London, 70 percent of subscribers dial numbers, and in Edinburgh the figure is 80 percent.
In many cases the change to AFN, begun in 1965, has simply meant substituting the appropriate figures for the old letters. But where AFN has brought a complete change of exchange numbers, people have until now been able to dial either the old letter-code or the new all-figure one. But this has meant using up much-needed equipment.
After the switch to AFN this equipment can be released for new exchanges.
(From the Post Office newspaper 'Courier', November 1969)
Date: Nov 1969
Sent by: Jenny Shaw
Category: Rules, regulations, working practices and instruments and information
