Posted on 07/23/2006 4:15:21 PM PDT by South40
In Texas it's 10 digit dialing.
True, but I hear about more and more people who are now using their cell phones as their ONLY phone -- and simply doing away with the land line altogether.
You need to spend some time in some competent telecom books. Pay attention to the development of the switching network and dialing plans. The choice of 7 digit number was made because that's the ideal number for humans to remember. Early in the life of the network, the second digit of the 3 digit prefix disallowed the use of digits 0 and 1. That is how the area codes were discerned. The needs for additional numbers and the advent of electronic switching allowed the use of 0 or 1 in the second digit. That expanded the available phone numbers in an area code, but required dialing a country code first. The country code for the United States is conveniently "1".
Area code splits are a hell of a lot of work. I've worked a bunch of them during the years at PacBell. Doing an overlay is comparatively simple.
I remember when they did it in Los Angeles from 6 to 7 digits to increase the numbers.
You're old enough to remember that point in time. The original switching machines were designed for numbers in the range of 0000->9999. The digits above that were used to select the outgoing trunks to another switching office. The "magic" 3 digit area code with 1 or 0 as the second digit did the long distance mapping from area code to area code. The next 3 digits did the end office selection. The last 4 digits mapped to a customer line.
That sounds like such a good idea, but if you have more than 2 people living in a house, and the main two are gone, with their cells, the others are left w/o a phone.
Area codes were instituted way back when rotary phones were "state-of-the-art," so they were assigned in a way that allowed the largest number of users to take the least amount of time to dial the numbers. All area codes back then had a 1 or 0 as the middle digit. The largest cities were assigned area codes with a 1 in the middle and with low numbers as the first and third digits -- since these would dial the fastest on a rotary phone (it took several moments to dial a 9 or a 0 back then, when you had to wait for the dial to rotate all the way back into place before dialing the next number).
This is how New York City ended up with an area code of 212 -- the area code that dialed faster than any other on the old rotary phones. Los Angeles (213) and Chicago (312) were next in line in terms of "dial speed" followed by Detroit (313), Dallas (214), Pittsburgh (412), St. Louis (314), etc. Notice how the original area codes for many of the large cities in the country all had a "1" in the middle -- including Philadelphia (215), Cleveland (216), Indianapolis (317), Milwaukee (414), San Francisco (415), Toronto, Ontario (416), etc.
Conversely, most area codes with a 0 in the middle and high numbers for the first and third digits were very rural (or had very limited phone service) at the time these area codes were put in place. The most cumbersome area code to dial was the one for the "Inland Empire" of California (909), followed by others like central New Jersey (908), the Dominican Republic (809), Hawaii (808), Alaska (907), Newfoundland (709), western Ontario (807), and the area that is now Chicago's southern suburbs (708).
“People are very aware of the 310 area code,” said Darren Lewis, a manager in the music industry who works in Santa Monica. “It has a cachet.”
LOL! Somehow, Mr. Lewis, I think you'll live through this.
Now, if Lewis adds another phone line to his office, it will start with 424, which he expects will confuse the many people he deals with on the East Coast.
“People are going to wonder where you are,” he said.
Eventually they'll figure it out. Buck up, cowboy! It ain't the end of the world.
I think Ca-li-for-nee-uh has 41 area codes now, 7 in the SF bay area alone.
11? Most of Texas is 10 digit dialing. Where is the extra digit?
I formerly worked in the yellow pages industry. If I understand it correctly, in California, they dial 1 before the number, even if it is a local call. They have not had 10 digit dialing up until now.
Someone mentioned 713 & 281 in Houston as being a geographical split. When Houston and Dallas got new area codes in the mid 90's, there was originally a geographic split. Houston inside of Beltway 8 kept 713, while outlying areas got the new 281. Same in Dallas, where everything inside of LBJ Freeway kept 214, and the outlying areas got 972. After a few years, in an attempt to preserve phone numbers, those imaginary boundaries were removed, and 713/281 and 214/972 were overlaid on top of each other. In addition, 832 was overlaid on top of 713/281, and 469 was overlaid on top of 214/972.
In Houston, it is possible to have a 713 number for your landline, a 281 number for your fax line, and an 832 number for your cell phone. Same in Dallas with 214/972/469.
" The choice of 7 digit number was made because that's the ideal number for humans to remember."
Those people shouldn't have telephones.
I probably know 20 phone #s that I use, my SS#, bank account #s, etc. and never write any of them down.
10 digits in Mass.: 617-XXX-XXXX, 978-YYY-YYYY, etc.
It'd odd when I visit a state with only one area code and on the radio, on TV, or in the papers when they give a number out (like in an ad or something) it's _only_ 7 digits!
We still have to dial 1 before the area code, except on a cell phone.
I'm currently in 760, 858 is a few miles south, as is 619 and we have to dial 1 before the number.
At my home in Glendale, 818, I have to dial 1 to dial my office 6 miles away in Loa Angeles.
You have to dial "1" first before dialing an area code. That's the 11th digit.
I routinely dial huge strings of digits to reach people. The company card access number is 11 digits to the prompt, 14 digits for my "pin", then 11 digits to call a number in the United States. It's particularly irritating when I call my colleague at his office in Mclean, VA and discover he's not there. I get to do the whole 36 digit dance again for his cell phone.
I would love to automate this nonsense, but the carrier has an indeterminate period between dialing the access number and the time it will start accepting digits. If you don't wait out the double beep and voice announcement, you may have to dial the whole 11 digit access sequence again. Very annoying.
No kidding - how strange that they are just now doing this! Of course, we don't have to dial 1 unless it's long-distance; ours is just 10 digits. Honestly, I thought everybody had it now.
No .. actually it started with the new internet phones. I already have to dial 10 numbers even if I call a local number.
We live in a town so small that when someone asks for a phone number, you just give them the last four digits.
Long distance? It's just a money making scheme. With everything so computerized these days, it doesn't really cost them extra.
We're also running out of IP addresses lol. That's being fixed though.
but if you have a cell in the same area you would has a 3 digit cell network "area code" prefix that would only be for cell phones
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