Tuesday, May 03, 2005

"The peasants will suffer"

Laucinieki cietīs or "The peasants will suffer" (as one bizarre but valid translation) is the headline my paper put on a story about the numbering reform proposed by the Communications Department of the Latvian Ministry of Transport. It was one of the few cute things the old pink sheet has done for me recently after a pile of minor headaches.
Anyway, the gist of the story is a proposal to reduce the number of area codes in Latvia from 26 to 9 (a variation on Lattelekom's proposal of a few weeks ago, thereby preserving the seven digit system for a few more years and freeing up around 2.7 million numbers, which should do for the de-facto fourth mobile operator and any other comers.
The changes would exclusively affect areas outside of Riga, the Riga rajon and Jurmala, where around half of Lattelekom's more than 600 000 customers live and where most businesses are concentrated. In the rest of the country, the holders of some familiar numbers will have to settle for having them changed. So the peasants will suffer.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

This is just a temporary solution. Sooner or later we will have to switch to 8 digit numbers.