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In the UK, letters were assigned to numbers in a similar fashion to North America, except that the letter O was allocated to the digit 0 (zero); digit 6 had only M and N. The letter Q was later added to the zero position on British dials, in anticipation of direct international dialing to Paris, which commenced in 1963.
Two-digit numbers were sufficient on small exchanges with fewer than 100 subscribers, while exchanges with a few hundred lines used three-digit subscriber numbers, e.g. 200–499. Larger exchanges which covered thousands of lines used four-digit subscriber numbers, e.g. 2000–5999, or five-digit subscriber numbers, e.g. 20000–49999.
The letters Q and Z were never used in the naming system, but Z was often mapped on the telephone dial to the digit 0 (zero). The prefix 55 was set aside for fictitious telephone numbers of the form 555-XXXX. They were often used with the fictitious exchange name KLondike (55).
The regions only had 5 digit (xxxxx) local numbers until they were upgraded and the numbers were changed to 6 digits. This resulted in the numbers becoming (064) 5xxxxx for Cooma/Snowy Mountains region and (064) 9xxxxx for Bega/Far South Coast region. When phone numbers were changed to 8 digits these two regions became (02) 64xxxxxx numbers.
The Australian letter-to-number mapping was A=1, B=2, F=3, J=4, L=5, M=6, U=7, W=8, X=9, Y=0, so the phone number BX 3701 was in fact 29 3701. When Australia around 1960 changed to all-numeric telephone dials, a mnemonic to help people associate letters with numbers was the sentence, "All Big Fish Jump Like Mad Under Water eXcept Yabbies ."
Until about 1966 UK phones used a different scheme than currently used for relating letter to number keys. While generally similar, the scheme did not include the letters "O" and "Q" on the "6" and "7" keys to avoid confusion between the digit "0" and the letters; the zero key was used for "O" and "Q".
It’s a good idea for all of us to memorize, or at least have analog access to, an emergency contact number at minimum. But with 10-digit phone numbers, multiple area code overlays, and phones ...
The letter Q was not used, and Z was translated to 0 (zero) on some dials, albeit never used in the name system. For example, a New Yorker's telephone number might have been CHelsea 2-5034, which a calling telephone subscriber would dial as the digit sequence 2425034, translating C to 2, and H to 4.