Monday, August 08, 2005

Playing the numbers*

Well, it looks like the Ministry of Transport will be looking at three schemes to free up more numbers for the "ravenous" mobile sector. A working group on numbering resources has come ip with a draft conceptual document (Latvians love "concepts" as the start of a long and twisted path to actually solving a problem :)) that offers three alternatives.
In short, alternative 1 will provide 400 000 numbers by the end of the year, it involves jiggering two domestic area code districts and changing 300 000 allocated mobile numbers (that have not yet been sold to customers). However, the 400 000 is all that will be available until a transition to eight digits starts in 2007. This is sorta good news for Bite Latvija, though not necessarily...
The other two alternatives will free up 500 000 numbers in early 2006, using different schemes for reassigning and freeing up national area codes (more or less the scheme proposed by Lattelekom).One scheme forsees a transition to eight digits in 2008, the other -- a decision whether to go to eight digits to be made in 2008.

*for non-native, non-American readers, the "numbers" is a kind of illegal lottery involving a lucky number played in ethnic (often black) neighborhoods in the US (though not by Latvian-Americans).

If the blogging has been a little thin and rushed lately, it is because I have had lots to do-- an extra translation project for my day job -- doing an English news service--plus I am still looking for other "arrangements" regarding this day job (see earlier posts on various problems). So if anyone needs a multilingual business writer (anywhere in the world, Latvia or Sweden preferred), just let me know. BTW, I am good at pretending to know something about telecoms.

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