foreign numbers, where?

BlueRinse wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@sneakemail.com:

German VoIP providers were recently forced by the regulation authorities to assign "normal" German landline numbers only to people actually living within the area codes, from which the numbers are assigned from. Some time next year, a new area code will be introcuded for IP telephony, so that the providers won't have to allocate number ranges in all ~20000 geographical area codes.

Until the new area code is being operational, Sipgate is assigning non- geographical numbers to customers not living in the area codes they have number ranges in. The problem is that these numbers are insaneous long and may not be diallable from outside Germany, e.g:

(01801) 7775550536

Tor

Thanks for bringing this to the general attention. I had heard about it but kind of forgot, since myu sipgate number was in GB.