Scottish phone numbers after independence
Once Scotland becomes independent, it would be natural to get its own international calling code instead of the British +44.
My guess is that Scotland would get +424 – it’s similar to +44, it’s available, and it’s in the European block.
There’s of course nothing that would prevent Scotland from stopping there, resulting in phone numbers such as +424 (0)141 639 9718. However, this would be unnecessarily long.
There are only two three-digit area codes in Scotland, (0)141 (Glasgow) and (0)131 (Edinburgh); these could easily be mapped to one-digit codes instead, such as (0)4 and (0)3.
Similarly, the four-digit codes could be mapped to two-digit ones, e.g., (0)24 instead of (0)1224 (Aberdeen). (See all the current area codes here.)
After shortening the area codes, all Scottish phone numbers would effectively have only eight digits in total, so perhaps the area codes could be permanently fused with the phone numbers, just like it happened in Denmark a few decades ago.
A few examples:
| Area | Current | 1st stage | 2nd stage |
|---|---|---|---|
| Glasgow, 0141 | +44 (0)141 639 9718 | +424 (0)4 639 9718 | +424 4639 9718 |
| Edinburgh, 0131 | +44 (0)131 348 5200 | +424 (0)3 348 5200 | +424 3348 5200 |
| Aberdeen, 01224 | +44 (0)1224 272 000 | +424 (0)24 272 000 | +424 2427 2000 |
| Isle of Arran, 01770 | +44 (0)1770 600 341 | +424 (0)17 600 341 | +424 1760 0341 |
Then again, it needn’t. Canada and the USA are different countries, and they’re both +1
True, but European countries tend to. E.g., the Czech Republic and Slovakia could have continued to use Czechoslovakia’s code (+42), but they decided to split it up in 1997 into +420 for the former and +421 for the latter (which is why +424 is now available for Scotland).