Area code of Riyadh being changed

Yes Riyadh 011 Jeddah 012 Dammam 013 Abha 017 so you will need to add (1)to the old area code starting 11th May acourding to many news pepers I had read on the past few weeks

Yes, it is true. Mobily just sent me a text about it.

STC just sent an SMS for the same. They say it will be on from 13-May-2013.

isn't that a bit stupid. It will cause all sorts of unnecessary trouble now

i further confirm as receive the message from mobile for riyadh change of code.

Updats

Riyadh area starting from  13th May
Other areas  18th Aug

slyshooter wrote:

isn't that a bit stupid. It will cause all sorts of unnecessary trouble now

I can't understand why they have to do it

TheLegendLeads wrote:

slyshooter wrote:

isn't that a bit stupid. It will cause all sorts of unnecessary trouble now

I can't understand why they have to do it

Why not.. They can do it.. And they're not required to give any reason..

I guess this move is to accommodate more telephone lines in all the areas. With new codes, they can add new telephone lines everywhere.

ghanshyampdave wrote:

I guess this move is to accommodate more telephone lines in all the areas. With new codes, they can add new telephone lines everywhere.

then its a positive thing then

Actually there are 2 common ways to add numbers to the possible combination set.

1- Adding digits to the city tel numbers - e.g. 465XXXX will  become 1465XXXX

or

2- Adding numbers to the city codes (Riyadh will be 011 instead of 01)

Both options have advantages & disadvantages. For example the first option gives:

- Comparatively lesser addition to number of possible combinations.
- Easy to phase out.
- As every subscriber's number is changed, a huge confusion generates in masses that retains for some time.

The second option gives a huge boost to number of possible combinations. They must have reached congestion and that's why they are adding 500 Million to the combination options (as they say; i didn't bother to reverse-engineer ).