Path: utzoo!telecom-request Date: 17 Jun 91 13:22:47 GMT From: Wolf PAUL Newsgroups: comp.dcom.telecom Subject: Re: German Telephone Unification Message-ID: Organization: IIASA, Laxenburg/Vienna, Austria, Europe Sender: Telecom@eecs.nwu.edu 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 468, Message 4 of 10 Lines: 42 linc@tongue1.berkeley.edu (Linc Madison) writes: > First of all, I think that Pacific Bell has had more than enough > notice of the reunification of Germany that they could have made some > mention of Germany and then listed "the area formerly the G.D.R." or > something like that. Granted. But in a country that sends mail addressed to Vienna, Austria via Sydney or Melbourne, what do you expect? (I am not joking!) > 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. [apologies if this has been covered recently] I think it is mostly a financial problem. There are problems which ***to the citizens*** of the former GDR are much more pressing than the issue of country codes, and there does not seem enough money even for those things without raising taxes rather more dramatically than the citizens of the former FRG are willing to put up with. For the time being, quite a few things just continue as they have always been, Postal Codes and Car Tags come to mind. The former FRG and GDR continue to use their old Postal Codes, with FRG-Codes prefixed with "W" (West), and GDR Codes prefixed with "O" (Ost=East). And even newly registered cars from the former GDR are recognizable by the fact that their license tags do not look like the FRG tags, even though they now sport the international code "D" instead of "DDR". Symbolic changes were important in Germany during the year leading up to unification, and for a short time thereafter; now reality has caught up with the people, and symbols are the last thing folks worry about. W.N.Paul, Int. Institute f. Applied Systems Analysis, A-2361 Laxenburg--Austria PHONE: +43-2236-71521-465 INTERNET: wnp@iiasa.iiasa.ac.at FAX: +43-2236-71313 UUCP: uunet!iiasa!wnp HOME: +43-2236-618514 BITNET: tuvie!iiasa!wnp@aearn.BITNET