Ofcom has recently announced a new range of phone numbers for the London area.

In addition to the existing 020 3, 020 7 and 020 8 London numbers, blocks of numbers beginning with 020 4500 through to 020 4599 are now available. That means about 10 million new phone numbers will be added to the existing 30 million in the London area code.

The UK capital is growing fast, but not by millions. Why the need for all these new phone numbers?

Of course, new homes requiring telephone and broadband connectivity do get built in the London area and there are many large businesses that need multiple telephone lines. However, there’s another reason why London phone numbers are so in demand.

London is internationally recognised as a great place to do business, and there’s a prestige and trust that comes with being based there. By registering a virtual number with a London prefix, businesses based elsewhere in the UK and worldwide can give the impression of having an office in the capital city.

What’s a virtual phone number?

A virtual phone number isn’t tied to a physical phone line, but is instead registered to a user or organisation. Once you’ve taken ownership of a virtual number you can forward phone calls made to that number on to a different telephone number, should you wish.

For example, a business with offices in London and New York may wish to forward out of hours phone calls made to their London phone number to their New York office, or a larger national business may use virtual phone numbers to give the impression of having a more local presence.

If that’s the case why don’t we just scrap geographical telephone numbers?

It’s possible that this will happen in the future. As we approach the 2025 switch off of the ISDN network and all telephone users move over to making phone calls using internet connectivity, phone numbers tied to a copper telephone line in a specific location will no longer exist.

However, we find that a key concern for businesses moving over to an IP (internet) based phone system is that they want to keep their well established phone number. Although the area code is of no technical use on an IP phone system, it’s simple for Beaming to port your existing number – including area code – over to your new telephone system, so it needn’t be a worry.