LONDON, Aug. 30 (Xinhua) -- London is set to gain 10 million new landline phone numbers this year with the launch of a new "0204" dialing code in order to cope with demand, British telecoms regulator Ofcom announced here Friday.
The British capital, whose dialing code is 020, currently has 30 million phone numbers allocated across the existing (020)3, 7 and 8 ranges, Ofcom said.
But Ofcom said it now has fewer than a million of the numbers left to offer phone companies. And with 30,000 London numbers being handed out each week, it said its new 0204 range will help cope with demand.
It is not the first time that Ofcom has intervened to stop the numbers running out. In 2012, it warned that towns and cities including Bournemouth, Aberdeen, Brighton & Hove, Bradford and Middlesbrough were set to run out of new numbers.
The latest expansion of London's telephone codes follows a steady change in their look over more than 70 years.
In 1958, the capital was allocated the single code 01, which remained until 1990 when it was replaced with 071 for inner London numbers and 081 for outer London numbers.
That was changed five years later to 0171 and 0181 before the code was unified under the 020 range in 2000.
