A memo by the Telecom Ministry & Ogero was issued yesterday informing all landline owners that the ‘0’ for all area codes will be dropped and replaced by ‘2’. In other words, when you’re dialing 01 444333 for example, it will become 21 444333 and the same applies to 04 05 06 07 08 09 which will become 24 25 26 27 28 29.

It didn’t make sense to have the ‘0’ anyway since we don’t need it when dialing from abroad and never use it when filling our phone numbers online, but I don’t know why it had to be replaced. There has to be some explanation behind it.

The memo says this is part of the LTE & FTTx deployment, so I’m guessing the mobile 03 code will be dropped eventually as well.