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The 0191 UK Telephone dialing code is used by the following

0191-2xx xxxx	Newcastle upon Tyne, North Tyneside and parts of Northumberland
0191-3xx xxxx	Durham and Chester-le-Street
0191-4xx xxxx	Washington, Tyne and Wear, South Tyneside and Gateshead
0191-5xx xxxx	City Sunderland and East Durham
0191-6xx xxxx	is used primarily by VoIP Providers covering this area. Some Newcastle City Centre numbers are now using 0191-6, as 0191-2 is now at full allocation.

Many prefixes such as 0191-350 are used by Cable & Wireless in Newcastle City Centre, and many 0191-4 numbers are now connected north of the River Tyne because blocks of 0191-2 are exhausted.

The original 091 area code was introduced in 1982 and phased in over a period of approximately five years. It was the newest two-figure STD code since the STD system was introduced into the UK. It was later changed to 0191 as a part of PhONEday.

0632					→					Became (091) 2 and (091) 4
0385					→					Became (091) 3
0894					→					Became (091) 4
0783					→					Became (091) 5

[edit] Conversion

The first area to be converted was Newcastle upon Tyne (0632) and the change over took about 20 months starting in 1982. Newcastle City Centre five-digit numbers in 0632 all began with 2, so 18 months before the scheme started, their numbers were prefixed with 3; that would allow the number 2 to be utilised for the North Tyne numbering part of the scheme. The first exchanges to convert to 7-digit dialling were Blaydon, Birtley, and Washington. Their local 6-digit numbers already began with 4 and were situated south of the River Tyne; to alleviate misdialling and confusion they were the first localities to convert. The main problem was that Blaydon numbers already beginning with 44 so misdialling in that exchange was inevitable.

To prevent misdialling between (0632) 44XXXX and (091) 444 XXXX, a plan was devised to change all South Tyne numbers beginning with the digit 4 to 7 digits by inserting 1 between the first two digits becoming (091) 41X XXXX instead. No similar problems occurred in North Tyneside as number 2 was no longer in use, 5 was not in use in Sunderland, and 3 was never used in Durham. Local numbers were changed as follows: from Birtley 40 to 410, Blaydon 44 to 414 and Washington 46 to 416. At the same time, Ryton, the only exchange in the Newcastle area with 4 figure numbers was prefixed with 413. Ryton was still utilising the old 089 422 code for Newcastle Ring until its conversion to 091. Ryton was never upgraded to 0632 prior to seven-digit dialling.

All other numbers were prefixed with 2 north of the River Tyne and 4 south of the River Tyne]]. Sunderland]] followed with the prefix 5 after the Tyneside scheme was completed, and Durham, again shortly after, with 3. Unlike ppTyneside]], whose chageover occurred in stages, the entire Durham and the entire Sunderland changeover occurred simultaneously overnight.

Five-digit Numbers in Sunderland were prefixed with 51 or 56; e.g., Sunderland (0783) 72000 became (091) 567 2000, and (0783) 43077 became (091) 514 3077.

Five-digit Numbers in Durham were prefixed with 38; e.g., Durham (0385) 64411 became (091) 386 4411.

[edit] References

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[edit] See also

• Telephone numbers in the United Kingdom