Why were Q and Z left off? just speculation, but in US (and UK-- but I don't know about rest of the world) phone numbers originally had "3 + X" format-- where the first 3 digits named the "exchange" and the next 3 or 4 digits the actual household. to make things easy, exchanges where given names, and the numbers matched. Since Q always take U-- it was a limiting factor. One reason for switching to all numbers was to increase exchanges. While 5 of the 8 button do have vowels-- it was getting harder and harder.. and some combo's just couldn't be used if you wanted to have "words" 9, 7, 5--combos .
Major cities "ran out" of numbers-- and continue to do so. NYC used to all be 212--now Manhattan has 212 (and something else i always forget) the boro's share 718, cell phones and beepers are all 917. (and didn't i read a story about every phone exchange in London being changed a few years ago? –numbers went from 6 digits to 7?)
And my phones have Q and Z on keys 7 and 9.
