Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!sun-barr!lll-winken!telecom-request From: rcbudd@rhqvm19.vnet.ibm.com (Richard Budd) Newsgroups: comp.dcom.telecom Subject: Re: German Telephone Unification Message-ID: Date: 17 Jun 91 16:12:18 GMT Sender: Telecom@eecs.nwu.edu Organization: TELECOM Digest Lines: 50 Approved: Telecom@eecs.nwu.edu X-Submissions-To: telecom@eecs.nwu.edu X-Administrivia-To: telecom-request@eecs.nwu.edu X-Telecom-Digest: Volume 11, Issue 465, Message 3 of 12 Linc Madison wrote in Telecom Digest V11 #448: > But anyhow, the other thing I noticed is that in the International > calling section, they still list "German Democratic Republic" and > "Germany, Federal Republic of" as separate countries. > Beyond that, though, what are the plans for bringing Germany under a > single country code? Have the plans been finalized and a date set, or > is it all still up in the air? It seems clearly unacceptable to have > Berlin a united city in a unified German nation, but with two country > codes. At last check, Germany was still divided into two country telephone codes and two series of postal zip codes (49 and "W" respectively for western Germany, 37 and "O" for eastern Germany). There are two difficulties holding up the unification of post office and telephone coding. First is the state of the eastern German telephone system. It is going to take several years and hundreds of millions of deutsch marks to bring a telephone system with no major improvements since the 1950's up to western German telecom standards. There is also the fact that the East German telephone system was designed to allow the Stasi (the secret police) easy access to conversations from any East German lucky enough to have recived permission from the government to have a phone. Secondly, there is the problem of redundant zip and area codes between the eastern and western portions of the country (i.e. 8000 is both Munich and Dresden). We have heard so much about the time required to split northern New Jersey into 201 and 908 area codes, and 908 had not been used anywhere else. Because the Deutsche Bundespost (the post office) also operates the telephone system, it would be in the best interest to solve the zip and area code problem together and allow a decent period of time to have 78 million Germans and God knows how many others accommodate themselves to it. Former Chancellor Helmut Schmidt has said it would take Germany at least twelve years to incorporate the five new federal states from what was once East Germany into the Federal Republic, twice the time it took West Germany to integrate the Saar in 1951-57. Bear in mind, this week the Parliament is finally going to decide whether to put the national government and ministries in Bonn or Berlin! I will check my German contacts from time to time on the status of the unified German telephone system and will report back to TELECOM Digest. Richard Budd | Internet: rcbudd@rhqvm19.vnet.ibm.com VM Systems Programmer | Bitnet : klub@maristb.bitnet IBM - Sterling Forest, NY | Phone : (914) 578-3746