The german system is much easier:
Any number that starts with non-zero is inside the same area code.
Any number starting with zero starts with an area code.
Any number starting with two zeroes (or a plus) starts with a country code.
Area (actually city) codes vary in length from 2 to 5 digits, depending on size
of the exchange (bigger exchange, less numbers).
Phone numbers (without area code) vary from 3 to 7 digits (AFAIK) depending on
the age of the phone number and the size of the exchange.
What usually happened is that they introduced longer numbers before they ran aut
of numbers in the area code, meaning new numbers started with 8 or 9 and were
longer than the old numbers, or they prefixed the old numbers with a 1 (I think
they still started the new numbers with 8 in my hometown to prevent mixups since
you couldn't distinguish eg 4865 from 48658)

Regards
Aydan

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