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FCC Considering 10-Digit Dialing [UPDATED]
Ambiguo writes: "An article in today's LA Times is reporting today that tomorrow the FCC will begin considering switching to 10 digit phone numbers, starting as early as next month. There's a lot of opposition to it, especially since there was a large backlash when LA tried this a little while ago, but some say it's a stepping stone to the eventual 11 or 12 digit phone number of the future." Update: 12/06 4:33 PM by michael: The FCC is not going to switch us all to 10-digit numbers. Yet.
All numbers should be your SSN (or some other number) followed by a letter from a to z. When you move, change jobs, etc., you call the phone company/post office and have them point your SSN+x number to the correct place.
And you thought identity theft was a nightmare now...just wait until something like this is implemented.
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"Fdisk format reinstall, doo dah doo dah,
I pledge allegiance to the flag...
of the Corporate States of America...
The majority of places I'm aware of which had variable length numbers are moving towards fixed length numbers. The value of knowing if a number has the correct number of digits is greater than the value of variable lenght codes.
Everybody needs to quit their damn whining.
If I tell you my damn phone number is 999-555-1212, then write all those damn digits down on a damn piece of paper and when you need to talk to me, type all the damn digits into the damn phone. How is that any harder than dialing 7 damn digits?
And for people who are whining about the damn machines that need to be changed to handle 10 digits: it will be easier because currently, some damn places have 10 damn digit dialing and others have 7 damn digit dialing. If they all had 10 damn digit dialing, your machines would be easier to program.
Note to people outside the USA: Yes, we damn Americans really are so damn stupid that we can't handle dialing a few extra damn numbers. But at least we don't have damn warm bawls.
I always considered the american system of fixed length for the area code (3 digits) and phone number (7 digits) extremely stupid.
In other countries, e.g. in most european ones, you have variable length area codes and phone numbers, allowing for a kind of "huffman coding": A big city gets 8 or 9 digit telephone numbers and uses a 2 digit area code, to keep the overall number as short as possible. Smaller towns use 4 or 5 digit telephone numbers and 3 or 4 digit area codes, and medium sized cities can use 3 digit area codes with 5 to 8 digit numbers.
A look at the german numbering plan, for example, shows other advances:
You use the '0' as the long distance access code, and the '00' as international access code. E.g. 0-40-54325432 to call from berlin to hamburg, or 00-1-415-7654321 to call to san francisco. This way you waste only one digit and not 2 for access codes.
You can group area codes locally. E.g. Berlin has the '30' area code, smaller cities and towns nearby have '331' (Potsdam) or '3322' (Falkensee) or '33439' (Blumberg). Cities in the south of germany have areacodes starting with '7', '8' or '9' (Bavaria and Baden Wuertemberg) or '6' (greater Frankfurt area), others start with '2' (Ruhrarea) or '4' (Hamburg, Bremen, Schleswig-Holstein). This way you have at least a rough idea where in the country you're calling to.
You should adopt that system here, and there will be no more whining about 2, 3 or even 4 completely different area codes for the same city.
Think about it,
Christian.
The problems with the NANP are due to overallocation in large cities. Any CLEC who wishes to compete in a rate centre needs an entire prefix. They get 500 customers, and that means 9500 numbers wasted. In the typical large american city, with many rate centres, and many CLECs, this means that the area code become exhaused.
Many locations have started conservation measures, either consolidation of rate centres, or allocation of sub prefix blocks to CLECs.
New York is the only area to do this. The FCC issued a ruling against it shortly afterwards.
The military phone system uses them to assign priorities to calls. The are used for 'PRIORITY', 'IMMEDIATE', 'FLASH' and 'FLASH OVERRIDE'. If none of them is pressed, then it's a 'ROUTINE' call. In the event of the system becoming saturated, calls are dropped in order of priority, so all ROUTINE's first, then up the chain until the system is no longer saturated. There is lots on the web which you can find if you use the priorities, here is one
Or for geographically small area codes, for example New York has 13 area codes.
So how do I know if you're in LA or New York? Just by looking at the number I could be charged long distance or short distance!
You'd have a whole lot more numbers, even with the current numbering plan if the USA had it's own numbering plan. Rather than something covering Canada, USA and other odd bits and pieces.
The current +1 "country" code has all sorts of complications, especially where different rates are charged to different countries within it.
_ONE_ friggin number, that stays the same no matter where I move, and 2 spare digits on the end, so a cell, fax, pager, computer, all share a common number.
AAAA-BBBB-CCCC-00 = phone
AAAA-BBBB-CCCC-01 = cell
AAAA-BBBB-CCCC-02 = fax
AAAA-BBBB-CCCC-03 = pager
AAAA-BBBB-CCCC-04 = computer
Depending on how this is implimented it's either DISA (dial the existing 11 digits, get some sort of tone/prompt and dial the next X) or German style DDI (just dial the number given, but needs the whole planet to be able to cope with variable length numbers.)
No doubt there are NANP terms for these, probably used nowhere else, too.
Before we get really ambitious with something like a common number for all your devices, let's get local number portability. If local numbers were portable there would be *no shortage* of telephone numbers.
With the conseqence of a telephone network which needs huge routing tables..
10 digit numbers with no 1 or 0 to start the area code or the exchange is 8^2(10^8) = 6.4 billion phone numbers. With a population of ~275 million that's more than 20 phone numbers for every man, woman, child, and little baby in the country.
Actually it's several countries, also unless the entire routing table was replicated world wide then there would be complications.
Currently the originator can at least have a guess at where a number is (based on the first 3 digits) thus could use a different link depending on if the call is going to Hawaii or New York...
The whole problem is that there are some exchanges with tons of unused numbers and others that are full. Each area code has 8 million numbers. If we got local number portability, all 8 million would be used.
Problem is that 7 digit number space is too small for urban areas, but often too large for sparsly populated areas. Both the USA and Canada have a wide variety of population densities.
Any kind of solution which is simple for people would require some radical actions.
This made sense some years ago when we had very high prices for long distance phone calls, you could have three types of numbers which were somewhat lower than the normal price. The called party paid the remainder. You had one type which had a tariff somewhat similar to long distance (slightly lower), one with a tariff for medium distance calls and one with a tariff for local calls (yes, we actually have to pay for local phone calls). And there are two types which costs the calling party a fixed amount for the whole call.
Nowadays the prices of phone calls dropped dramatically, the price of a long distance call beeing near (or even _below_) a local call, so these numbers lost there original use.
You can even get situations such that such a "split cost" number is actually more expensive to call than any ordinary geographic number. e.g. such numbers being excluded from a discount scheme.
But what happens if I don't want a fax or a pager, but I want 3 voice lines? Or several fax machines, but nothing else? This would be a nice system, except it would need to be tailored for each situation, and then you're back where you started.
If people will not need to distinguish between them then they can all be on separate lines with the same number.
One problem is that with 7-digit dialing you know that if a call goes through then it's a local call. With 10-digit dialing it's harder to tell whether you're being charged by the minute or not. Easy to get burned if, for example, you assume that the number your ISP gave you is local just because it's in your area code, only to get a nasty surprise with your long distance bill at the end of the month.
The latter appears to be a uniquely NANP happening. In most parts of the world the local number is simply a short convenience. The number of digits dialed dosn't affect the charging.
i.e. if the US followed the rest of the planet then you could dial a local number as 1-ABC-DEF-GHIJ, ABC=DEF-GHIJ or DEF-GHIJ and it would both work and have no difference in charging.
Why are we in such a crisis? I know people have more phone numbers for computers, pagers, faxes, cell phones, etc, but is it really THAT extreme?
The minor reason is that the USA dosn't have all of the +1 number space the major reason is that a 7 digit "local number" is too small for many urban areas, but also too large for sparsly populated areas. But 3-3-4 (or 3-7) format is hardcoded in too many places to easily change.
> Better yet: One number, period.
Yes, you could think of the spare 2 digits as a "port"
> The nature of the call is detected and handled accordingly.
Yes, I don't see why we couldn't have a packet sent first identifying the device type & connection.
i.e. I fax someone. The fax sends a digital identification, saying it would like a fax connection. Or I connect via TCP/IP to the same number, and the first packet signifies a IP connection. I phone, the first packet signals an voice connection. etc.
I guess it's a just a matter of time before everything converges into one data stream.
There's your Bull. I can't wait for the cutover to catch up to all the phone switches so it's all 10 digit enabled.
John
John
There is also the concept of permissive dialing. Even though it's NOT REQUIRED to dial the area code, I've long looked forward to being able to put in the whole telephone number (e.g. 1-212-345-6789) in my laptop's list of ISP's telephone numbers, and let the telco sort things out.
This is something in which is probably the norm outside of North America. Since long before laptops were even invented. Even hardware which belongs in a museum can manage this, so far as modern computer controlled kit is concerned its probably a standard feature.
The logic being "if I dial these digits it will always work. If I happen to know I'm in the same area I can dial this shorter set of digits"
Indeed it looks almost as though the USA made a design decision to make humans help machines.
BT/Oftel in the UK has changed the length of the telephone number 3 times in my recent memory, added and split area codes. London is onto its 3rd set of area codes in recent history. Actually make that 4 because where I grew up we had short std code dialing and that went away as some point as well.
The short "local codes" always were an alternative option. "Permisive dialing" (as the American's call it) was part of the system from the start. Even though allowing it could cause certain exchanges to "trombone", remember that all the routing was originally hardwired through relays. (Part of the point of the short codes is that they worked as explicit routing instructions.)
I guess it's a just a matter of time before everything converges into one data stream.
Aahh... the promised land!
John
(that's {985209B0-CBCC-11d4-991D-00A0C029468C} to you...)
John
When 1+ dialling came into effect, they had a jingle on the TV and radio, at least around these parts:
So, the only restriction is on local exchanges and area codes. Here in Kansas City, there can't be any 913-816-xxxx numbers or 816-913-xxxx numbers, but Southwestern Bell is absolutely free to use those exchanges in, say, Paola, KS and St. Joseph, MO, with no trouble at all. We also couldn't use 913-913-xxxx or 816-816-xxxx here locally, because it is permittedfor us to dial our own area code for a local call. But there's still no reason why those can't be used away from the state line.For those truly massive metros that require multiple area codes, it would be necessary that none of the area code numbers be used as exchanges in any of them. But there are 792 (8 * 99, because an exchange can't end in 11) theoretically possible exchanges for each area code, so even if scores of them are declared ineligible, we're talking about well over seven million potential numbers per area code. Allowing for some underuse in various exchanges, let's make it an even five million.
We've got 640 (8 * 80, excluding xyy patterns) possible geographic area codes, even allowing for massive expansion of non-geographic codes. Since each state, province, and district requires one area code, even if there are much less than five million phones, we ought to knock that number down to 600.
By my math, that gives us 3 billion geographically-allocated numbers in North America right now, and we're nowhere near needing that many.
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SVM, ERGO MONSTRO.
[100% ISO 646 Compliant]
SVM, ERGO MONSTRO.
The driver behind this has been that when the phone numbers were first assigned most people didn't have a phone line but plans were put into place for a phone line in every home. So whilst we were in a situation where most homes had one line we were OK for numbers however now the norm is approaching
Actually the problem is exactly the same as with the NANP. Plenty of numbers but in the wrong place. Indeed the UK plan is ever worst in some ways, since the original design was worked out around each STD code covering a specific amount of geographical area.
The NANP was more flexiable in this respect, but considerably more complex in terms of charging.
Not splitting up the STD codes by provider. There is no reason at all that C&W need to have 0500 for free calls, while BT had 0800. This would have halfed the requirements for special area codes.
Worst are the premium rate codes, which really IMHO should have gone into a special numbering space, undialable from outside the UK. i.e. numbers starting with 1.
It was March 2000 that the 10 digit dialing was enforced. It was optional in January, and announce (stupid Ma Bell message in my VMB) in Nov. or Dec.
This said, for a while, I was able to dial 7-digit after March, but only rarely. And there was no rhyme or reason to it, sometimes a 7 would work, other times not -- even the same number.
By April every call I made required 10 digit.
The problem stems way back to the dawn of the phone company. Since there is no "enter" key on a telephone, the length of a phone number must be either fixed or predictable.
The solution chosen was quite a simple one, and I'm amazed that more people have never noticed it. It is thus: The second digit of all area codes is either a zero or a one. Thus, if the second digit dialed in is a zero or a one, the phone switch will wait for 10 digits as opposed to just seven.
This was the original plan which was simple for the hardware 50 years ago to understand. IIRC the NANP never actually fully followed this in the first place.
It is important to note that this does not mean that there is a shortage of phone numbers. Well, there is a shortage, but it is a ficticious one, created by the way in which phone numbers are allocated. Phone numbers are allocated in blocks of 1000 consecutive numbers which all go to the same local switch.
10,000 line blocks of numbers (or more specifically 10,000 line "local switches") go right back to the original idea for automated telephone systems. It's utterly obsolete WRT any equiptment which has been available for decades.
It would be easier if area codes were more logically assigned.
When the NANP was originally created there was a lot of logic to it. Just that since then bits and pieces have been added on all over the place.
Take your example of a city with 10 random area codes (fictitious I believe since I don't know of any city with that many. Maybe LA...). Having to remember 1 of 10 area codes is essentially the same as remembering a single extra digit, not 3 extra digits.
The point is how would you then change the US over to 8 digit local dialing. One possible way would be to add a digit onto the end of the 7 digit number and have a completly new set of area codes, problem would be finding a way to do these in a way which does not conflict with the existing numbering. This is something which would have been easier when the second digit of the area code was 0 or 1...
Yes, there is that rule. That never struck me as particularly the reason that telephone numbers were allocated as seven digits.
It's historical, very historical. The original idea being a 3 letter abreviation and a 4 digit number.
All current 3 digit area codes could be converted to 4 digit by appending a 1.. then 2-9 would be used for additional area codes.
Except that it would probably make more sense to have bigger "local numbers" than more area codes. With lots of area codes you run into the problem with the area either being some subset of a meaningful area or several area codes covering the same area. i.e. a 3-8 split makes more sense than a 4-7 split.
London was always meant to be unified; 0171, 0181 were temporary measures to scrape some space in the old overcrowded numeric space.
Actually the London split was a huge mistake...
The system doesn't quite work like it used to, but the first 3 numbers is the exchange, which used to relate directly to a building somehwere nearby where all the physical phone lines for all the numbers with that exchange connected.
Actually to a very large pile of relays. This was the best part of a century ago. The buildings may still exist but now contain much smaller pieces of hardware, the basic unit of which is a concentrator which connects around 100 lines to a either a 1.5M (NA) or 2M(rest of the world) digital link. These will scale pretty much indefinitly.
It was a starting place. I assume that some of those technologies will get more and more multiplexed and multifunctional so that less numbers will be necessary. I especially envision faxes becoming rarer and hopefully modems. Besides, by adding a digit you can make 2 numbers per person into 20 numbers per person. Which should be more than enough.
I do not have a signature
Hope you are right about it getting better.
Also, I still think there is a place for circuit switched technology in phone networks...
Just because it CAN be done, doesn't mean it should!
Make wireless phones use IPs? Um, if IP addresses were so easy to remember, we would be using them in place of name. For example, we'd all go to http://64.28.67.48/ instead of http://slashdot.org/ to read /.
And what happens when (if) we move to IPv6? Do you really want to have to dial numbers that long?
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"The urge to save humanity is almost always a false front for the urge to rule." --H.L. Mencken
A 10-digit number should be acceptable provided that each new section is a shared area code that can be remembered separately.
If it is simply a long string of evidently random digits, won't the bells run up against the theoretical "average" digit memorization length of 10? If you present a string of digits to a random test subject and ask them to recite those digits, most will falter after the tenth.
For people who change their home addresses and thus their phone numbers frequently, an 11-12 digit number might result is lots of recollection failures. One thing the telco's have not experienced yet is user support for people who have forgotten their home phone numbers!
-konstant
Yes! We are all individuals! I'm not!
-konstant
Yes! We are all individuals! I'm not!
However, i don't see why it was necessary - as far as i can tell, it would have been better in every way just to expand area codes to four digits.
- It would solve the 212 / 646 problem - in Manhattan, there's an overlay of 212 and 646. Businesses -hate- getting stuck with a 646 number, because 212 is supposedly more prestigous. But all they would have had to do is take ever number of the form 212-XXX-YYYY and change it to 2120-XXX-YYYY, and give 2121 through 2129 numbers to all new subscribers.
- People could keep seven digit dialing.
- I haven't done the math, but i'm pretty sure that four-digit ACs allow for more phone numbers than the current system, even if we had stuck with the "area codes have a 0 or 1 in the middle, and the first three digits of phone numbers will never look like an area code" system.
- It would be easier to memorize area codes, and be able to look at a phone number and know where it is. If i see a 617 number, i know it's a Massachutsetts. With 4 digit ACs, i would see a 617x number and know it's Mass. But when i see some overlaid area code that doesn't at all resemble 617, i'm not going to have any idea where it's from.
Can anyone think of any reason the telcos didn't take this approach?(BTW, cheap plug, since i'm pretty confident this will get moderated up: Check out the project linked to by my sig. It's pretty phat.)
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Mod up a post Rob doesn't like and you'll never mod again
I live in the D.C. area, in Northern Virginia, a ten minute drive into the city. We only started even having to use area codes for local numbers about two months ago. Ten-digit dialing hasn't been standard here for three years, not by a long shot. Even when we started having to use area codes for local calls, two months ago, people started complaining. Now, I wasn't one of those people, and I understand the need for modernized phone number systems. However, I can understand how people, especially older people and the less educated, can see such changes as an added burden.
That being said, it's a necessary step for future expandability. For now, at least. But, I bet that eventually, within the next 20 years at the accelarating pace of technology, telephone numbers and most telephone lines themselves will be passe. Cable and fiber and wireless are the future--telephone lines are just such puny creatures with such small bandwidth--and I honestly think that most calls will be routed through cyberspace in the future. Why have to remember a 10 digit phone number, when you can pick up a receiver and say: "John Laws, hampden-Sydney, Virginia," the first time, and then just pick up the receiver and say "John Laws" any time after the first? It's coming within the next two decades, three at the most.
"The more corrupt the state, the more numerous the laws."--Tacitus, *The Annals*
So when will they be coming out with hexidecimal touchtone phones?
"Family Steakhouse: phone DEADBEEF for reservations."
It's 10 PM. Do you know if you're un-American?
What I saw was 0224-21279 for a local call... Or, a particularly nice one, 031-0568091
These are from Telecom Italia, by the way. The numbers are infinitely different depending on the service you use as well. (Mobile, stationary, digitally switched, etc..)
It took about two months to learn the system, during which, I carried around a scrap of paper in my wallet with some assists on it. Didn't take long at all to learn.
However, you can take a look at first, WHY the FCC is thinking of this (They're running out of phone numbers) and correlate it to IP addresses.
While the current IP string is fine for most networks, setting up a network with dedicated IP addresses is getting more and more difficult. This is primarily due to what I call first octet squatters. Given the number of independent networks around the world, it's quite feasible to give each locale a Third Octet string (instead of the usual second) This would allow for approximately 64000 network connections in a local area.
Folks, No local network I've EVER heard of had 64K comps hooked up to it. That's plenty of address space. For the most part, privatized networks have realized this, and have gone to splitting the same octet between themselves and an associate.
Unfortunately, there are quite a few number hogs out there, and regardless of the amount of computers that could feasibly be connected (with only three primary Octets allocated you get around 49 MILLION, 500 THOUSAND independent IP allocations)with the third octet string instead of the second.
So called "Plank owners" of the internet need to wake up and smell the coffee. Secularizing the second, or first octet string is effectively the same as driving a bus sideways across a 6 lane freeway at 5 mph. Major startup ISP companies that got their go in the late 80's and are now pretty much defunct (Compuserve) are guilty of this as well.
Many people don't see this as a problem. They tend to think like I did, (until I saw it for myself)which was "with 4.294967296 BILLION IP addresses, we'll never run out of space."
The phone companies thought the same way.
krystal_blade
It will be easy to motivate our fellow man; there is hardly anything people treasure more than not being annihilated.
I think you missed the point that people are complaining about (not that I blame you...I KNEW what the problem was (from my dad, who works in the industry), and I had to read the article three times to find it).
This would be 10 digit dialing to everyone, everywhere in the USA, all the time. You would NEVER have to dial 1 for a toll call; all calls 10 digits, all the time (0, 911, 311, 411, 611 excepted of course). So, some "consumer advocates" are concerned that people would be too stupid to figure out whether they are making a toll call when they don't have to dial a 1 (even though most people don't know what the leading 1 really means anyway).
Not having to assign special meaning to the leading 1 means that another 100 area codes open up, and the system not having to figure out whether you will be dialing 10 or 7 digits means that you can add exchanges starting with 0 and 1, for another 2x10^6 numbers per area code. Plus, the system becomes much LESS confusing for the users, as it will always be the same procedure for making a call, and you will never have your phone number (area code) changed out from under you again.
It's actually 7 'chunks'. So following that rule, yes, "five-five-five-one-two-one-two" for many would reach the capacity of their short-term memory, but "five-five-five-twelve-twelve" would not. Obviously, this varies from person to person.
I've been living in D.C. for a few years where we have 10-digit dialing. It's easy because it's based on geography (202 is D.C., 703 is Virginia, etc.), but I can see it being problematic when you have more than one area code in a given geographic region. I couldn't think in terms of "Virginia 555-1212", so it becomes more items to remember, and therefore more difficult.
[I find it quite dry, but for anyone who's in to this sort of thing, you can find the article that established this '7 chunk' limit at here.]
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The other thing, and this isn't a psychological theory but just something I've noticed, is that I really don't remember certain area codes as sequences of numbers anymore. For example, where I'm from in michigan, the area code is 616. No one from there tells me their area code, I just know it. And I don't put any effort into remembering it. It's getting to be like that with my new area code (520) as well. I imagine it's something akin to a Chinese speaker remembering a certain pictograph; the area code only takes up one "chunk" of memory. And if we were this familiar with, say, the area code AND the LATA, then all we'd really have to remember as a sequence would be somebody's last 4 numbers.
But outraged consumer advocates and state regulators say adopting 10-digit dialing is unnecessary and would create confusion about the distinction between a local and long-distance call.
I can see a point here, but only kind of. Traditionally, when you dial a number with a "1" at the front, you are going to get charged. Without the "1" it is free. All of that is out the window with this change.
BUT! I'm in Verizon's monopoly and routinely dial a 7 digit number (no "1"'s anywhere) and get charged. Granted, I was pissed the first time, but now I'm used to it. In fact, nowadays, I completely ignore whether it is long distance or not. Partly because the charges are peanuts and I now have an income, but mostly because I now usually use my mobile which doesn't differentiate between a free or toll call.
If that was the case no one would remember IP addresses, and it seems like most people have no problem in that department.
Huh? If people could easily remm=ember IP addresses, we wouldn't need DNS.
While many network geeks may be able to remember IPs, they are hardly representative fo the population as a whole.
I know the IPs I know because they're all on the same network and start with the same 6 digits, so all i really have to "remember" is the last 6. If I had to truly memorize all 12 for every system I wouldn't have a chance...
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Recursive: Adj. See Recursive.
I was living in Denver when it switched to 10 digit dialing. To tell the truth, it was a pain in the arse. 8 mos later, I was still occasionally forgetting area codes from the numbers (force of habit, and the fact that a lot of written/printed numbers hadn't been updated to include the area code.) To make things worse, the really crappy local phone company, US West, allowed the phone ring up to 5 times before a message cut in to tell you of your mistake. I don't know why they couldn't do it faster, it was really irritating.
10 digit dialing isn't required where I am (San Francisco Bay Area) but since I use my cell phone and my work phone, I dial all numbers as 11 digits (1-area code-then the number) because especialy on my cell, I don't know the default area code (is it the one that is on my phone (415?) or the area code that I am in (925?)? So, no matter if I am dialing a 415, 925, or 650, or whatever, I just dial 11 digits, and all of my phone numbers in the phone book feature are stored that way. Even at work, when I have to dial the numbers manualy, I just dial 11 digits by habit. (As I remember, if you dial a local number (555-1212) as 11 digits (1-415-555-1212) it's considered the same for the billing options.)
Umm... That's the 11 or 12 digit numbers. The 10 digit ones are just you having to type the area code on to all exisiting numbers, as well as new ones.
The old number (with area code) (234) 555-1212 would be dialed 2345551212, even if you were in the 234 area code before.
It used to be that dialing the area code caused it to be a long distance number - you'd get billed for it. Nowadays, though, you generally have to dial 1 first anyway. Here in the Atlanta area it's been 10 digits for several years, and I haven't had a problem. Most people even abreviate it - 7 for 770 and 4 for 404.
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Stupid sexy Flanders.
By adding the # and * characters into the currently allowed dialable digits you would get 4,159,780,352 (12^9 - 10^9) new numbers to work with.
That should increase the supply for long time. Though this could be a problem for rotary/pulse phone users, the new numbers could be reserved numbers dialled by computers and fax machines for quite a few years.
Also, the current shortage will level off in the next couple of years. I just saw a graph on c|net indicating that the number of analog modems will stop growing by 2002, this should reduce the number of new second analog phone lines/numbers used by residences, businesses, and ISPs.
Also, Follow-Along phone numbers that are consistant between your home and cell phones could reduce the demand for new numbers as well.
Work for Change & GET PAID!
FCC officials contend that 10-digit dialing would create tens of millions of new local phone numbers beginning with the digit "1" or "0."
1 signifies dialing a long-distance call, a toll call in all cases except 1-800, 1-500, 1-888, 1-8NN. 0 signifies an operator-assisted call. If the FCC would change this so that you could be dialing crosstown into a different area code and dial a 1 or 0 but not be making a long-distance or operator assisted call. Then, what happens if you hit an extra digit? Look:
Local cross-area call: 162-523-3445
But then add an extra digit, either through a slip of a key, or dialing one of those 777-MONEY numbers or something.
Your local call changes to: 1-625-233-4450, a long distance call. That's what the problem is really about.
Photos of bits of the past hiding in the present: afiler.com
For those of you who don't know what 10-digit dialing is (the article isn't very clear), he's an explanation from a phone company employee:
Users have to dial all 10 digits of a phone number whether its inside their area code or not; all phone numbers in the US are 10 digits. This frees up leading numbers such as 0 and 1 for creation of new exchanges and area codes. Please note that adding 0 and 1 to the set of 2-8 increases the size by 25%: thats not too much at the rate that number use is growing in the US. However, any move to 11 or 12 digit phone numbers should be dialing the entire number, so this is a step in the right direction.
If you know that the first 3 digits you dial will always be the same (or maybe vary between 2 different sets), then that becomes part of your long term memory, to which you can easily append the other 7.
Why do we even need 7 digits for local calls? I certainly have less than 100 friends and family that I call. 10 digits are just a waste!
With digital switches, exchanges are basically area codea now, so that takes care of that problem.
All we need is a 3-digit number, and maybe a 3-digit exchange for less-dialed people or long distance calls.
I'm filled with solutions!
-- clvrmnky
From Verizon's website:
"Prestigious" area codes? Tell me about it!
Back in the mid 80's Eastern MA went from one code to two (uh, 617 and 508, IIRC) and the sheer amount of bitching that came from folks that didn't want to be associated with the "farther away from Boston" 508 area code was insane! There were talks of lawsuits, the whole shebang.
Now Toronto is going to 10 Digit dialling because the 416/905 split has become saturated. They've been telling everyone for the past year. Come January, I imagine there's going to be tons of bitching because "We weren't told!"
Pope
Freedom is Slavery! Ignorance is Strength! Monopolies offer Choice!
It doesn't mean much now, it's built for the future.
Yeah, I can get email on my phone too. But what we seem to be talking about here is using an IP address (with dns, possibly) in place of a phone number.
.wireless?), or have something like phone://hemos.attws.com ? Which, again, would tie things to a single provider and would change every time you went w/ another service.
Just thought of another negative: people are always complaining about the lack of domain names as it is. Would we use a new TLD (.phone?
--
"The urge to save humanity is almost always a false front for the urge to rule." --H.L. Mencken
In Australia we converted our phone number systema few years ago without any major problems.
We used to have (0X) XXX XXXX numbers for metro areas and (0XX) XXX XXX for country areas. Now we have uniform (0X) XXXX XXXX numbers, with an area code covering one or two states. Given us a heap more numbers to play with, and now when i'm calling a differnt area within my state, it's actually *less* numbers to dial!
Then again yankee's dont seem to like updating systems (the metric system instantly comes to mind)
I don't suffer from insanity. I *enjoy* it!
it would have been better in every way just to expand area codes to four digits
Four digit area codes would introduce ambiguity into the actual meaning of the digits you dialed.
Currently, the rules for dialing are relatively simple:
Any call beginning with 2-9 is a number that consists of seven digits, except if the initial digit is followed by two 1's.
Any call beginning with 1 is a number that consists of 11 digits, unless the next three digits are 010, in which case, the next three digits are used to specify a long distance carrier (220, for example), which is then followed by the remainder of the original number. (Originally the long distance carrier choice only needed to be proceeded by a 0, but recent changes in the phone network have required the extra 1-0).
0#, or 0 followed by a timeout will get you to an operator. 0 followed by 10 digits will get you operator help for that specific number. 0 followed by 1, followed by other numbers is the format for international dialing.
How would four-digit area codes fit into the system without creating any ambiguity? Perhaps if a direct call began with 11, but what about the other methods of dialing an area code?
NO CARRIER
I lived in Maryland when they made us start dialing area codes for the local calls in the DC suburbs- it used to be that I just had to dial a 7 digit number from the DC suburbs of Maryland (301) and get to Virginia (703) and DC (202). They started running out of prefixes, since they couldn't duplicate the prefixes within the suburban DC area. So we had to start dialing area codes to get to Virginia and DC. There was a huge uproar over that. You would have figured that life as we know it was going to cease to exist. It didn't, the phones kept ringing. Then they went to an overlay (multiple area codes covering the same area) and there was another uproar. It happened, and people got used to it. I moved to central Texas (512), and now I only have to dial 7 digits for a local call. It was a weird transition, but I survived (I can dial the area code first, but it doesn't make a difference). In the numbering plan for the area, we will be going to an overlay soon. And again, we will hear all sorts of uproar.
Big effin deal. People will complain, then they will get used to it. It is a matter of growth and progress. People should be proud of the fact that they need more phone numbers- more people in the area, a larger tax base, people are getting better connected- it really is a good thing! It just shows how wired and high tech your area is.
You're asking a government agency (the FCC) to plan ahead and do something makes sense. Think about that.
It's the same case with area code + number dialing. The area code is analagous to the network.
with humpy love,
with humpy love,
humpmonkey
Why not also introduce more specific codes. In the UK, we have a lot of so-called non-geographic codes. In addition to premium and toll-free numbers, we have numbers billed as a local call wherever they're called from, and specific clusters dedicated to mobile phones and pagers (and since, in the UK, the callER pays all charges, not the callEE, this is even more useful).
It always confuses me when visiting the US why this isn't in place - it's really handy, and I think businesses would appreciate it too.
--Remove SPAM from my address to mail me
I don't know about any of you, but I find it hard enough to remember a 7-digit number. True, there is a limit to how many 3-digit prefixes exist in an area, so it may be about as easy as remembering 6-digits. With an extra 3, that puts it on the borderline of rememberability. IPv6 bugs me in this way too. As it currently stands, I can remember more than a few current IPv4 addresses, because consistent prefixes apply here, too. Within my university, everything starts with xxx.xxx, so all I have to do is remember the last two bytes, and most of the important stuff is on xxx.xxx.2 anyway, though that stuff actually has names (except when the name server is having problems, which is generally the only time I need to remember such things anyway). I also have a few friends on cable modems, but they're all in 24.xxx anyway. Also fairly easy to remember. All I have to remember is that they're on @home in the particular place they live, and the last two bytes. It's not much more difficult than a phone number, and certainly not more difficult than a phone number with an area code. But still, IPs are meant to be read by machines anyway, so quadrupling their length isn't the end of the world, and the benefits are great. Adding 3 digits to phone numbers is going to be really taxing, though. I have a hard time imagining phone use increasing by 3 orders of magnitude, or even two. Granted, one digit my not be enough do to inefficiencies in implementation, but I think two ought to do it quite well, and hopefully end the breakaway growth of area codes, too.
WARNING: there is a trojan on your
It doesn't work like that. America only has a unified dialing with places like Canada and the Carribean. To dial other parts of the world requires you do do something different, i.e. dial 011 + "international dialing code for relevant the country" before the call.
If the FCC does introduce nationwide 10 digit dialing, there will still be areas within international dialing code 1 which are 7 digit, unless Canada follows suit, etc. But then again, as far as Americans are concerned, calling Canada will probably be a long distance call, and dialing will be no different than long distance within the US. The only confusion will occur for travellers (unless they're in Toronto, which already has or will shortly have 10 digit dialling.)
Any kind of plan involving a single identifier to reach a person anywhere would be accomplished>through creative use of DNS, and could involve actual names and words. The accounts themselves might possibly use a email-like name@provider kind of system. But I dream.
Well, it looks someone already tought about that... It's called SIP (Session Initiation Protocol) (RFC 2543) I know it allows IP phone addresses like sip://user@host and support call forwarding and other nice stuff... and its much much simpler than H.323
about nobody actually 'dials' a number anymore, at least not many people. Ok, what's the proper term for using a touch tone pad?
"FCC Considering 10 digit punching"
"FCC Considering 10 digit entering" ?????
try { do() || do_not(); } catch (JediException err) { yoda(err); }
Denver has had this for over a year. Big deal.
I think the phone companys should go straight to IPv6 and give every phone an IP address. Any kind of plan involving a single identifier to reach a person anywhere would be accomplished through creative use of DNS, and could involve actual names and words. The accounts themselves might possibly use a email-like name@provider kind of system. But I dream.
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Vidi, Vici, Veni
Plus the idea that everybody gets assigned a static phone number for life - so now I can't even change it when I get harrasing phone calls. No thanks.
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Stupid sexy Flanders.
If I remember right from Psychology class oh so long ago, individuals can only store 7 to 9 digits max in their short term memory.
But in today's world of palm pilots, who needs short term memory?
In the UK things are a terrible mess because BT won't spend the money to clean it up.
:-(
e.g. area codes can be anything from 3 to 5 digits and numbers anything from 6 to 8 digits. (I *think* all of the old 5 digit numbers are gone now)
e.g. London
(020) XXXX XXXX
Cambridge
(01223) XXX XXX
Newcastle
(0191) XXX XXXX
Note how the local part (call a friend) varies in length, as does the area code.
There's no way to tell how to group the digits in a given number. You just have to knowl.
Lord Pixel - The cat who walks through walls
Lord Pixel - The cat who walks through walls
A little bigger on the inside than out
> The biggest problem, in my mind, is that it has long been rumored that humans are poor at memorizing sequences that are more than 7 digits long.
:)
That is why we CHUNK the long 10 digit phone number into smaller groups. It's MUCH easier to memorize a long constant in pairs or triplets, then it is to memorize a long stream of single digits.
AAA - BBB - CCCC
vs
(X, X, X,) (X, X, X, X), (X, X, X, X)
Cheers, where everyone knows your name
DNS? God, I hate having to "type" names to go with the numbers in my cellphone. I'd hate to try to do that on a regular basis.
Of course, DNS WOULD help alleviate the whole "well, I switched providers, so my number is now..." syndrome. Assuming, of course, we don't get to the point where phone numbers really DO follow us around.
My only fear is, "Yeah, you can call me at phone://goatse.cx" Not to mention all the likely spam...
--
"The urge to save humanity is almost always a false front for the urge to rule." --H.L. Mencken
It used to be this way I think, but New York City now has a new area code, 646. I think other places have codes that break that rule.
People who get all upset over losing the "prestigious-ity" (sp?) of an area code are probably the same people who throw a fit when their uptime on their box gets trashed. It's just a number, get over it.
BilldaCat
The reason for all this problems is the bad idea of a unified numbering plan (= all numbers in a country have the same length including area code).
This fixed number length did not allow easy "escaping" for longer numbers and has led to the actual problems.
An variable length numbering plan would have many advantages:
- Different length area codes
Short ones for big cities, longer one
for small towns.
See in germany, the area code for Berlin
is 030 (two digits plus the '0'), but
it can be as long as 034533 (five digits
plus the '0').
- Different length phone numbers
If your area code length is variable,
so the amount of usable numbers in this
area code is variable. This means, while
maintaining a maximum number length in
total (as required by international phone
exchanges), you can still have more numbers
in the big cities. I personally think its
insane to have different area codes for the
same city like in the USA. Here in germany
all lines in the same city maintain the same
area code.
- Easy transition
Our town (rather small) once had numbers
with three digits. When it occured that
this might not be enough they said:
Ok, let all numbers beginning with 'x' be
four digits. They did this of course before
using the first digit 'x' for any three
digit number. This allowed to keep the old
numbers while beeing able to greater the
ammount of possible numbers.
After a while this was still not enough,
but in the meanwhile most of the old three
digit numbers disappeared (they were withheld
when the subscribers changed. For the new
subscriber you can give out a new longer
number), so finally they could reuse the
numbers used for the old three-digit numbers
for newly four-digit numbers.
And because this was still not enough, they
had other unused areas which they declared
to be six-digit numbers. They put new numbers
into this range, removed old numbers when they
got them.
As you can see, this is a very smooth and
nice transition scheme. Nobody needs to be
forced to get a new number, but you still
can cope with the need for new numbers.
- Direct dial-in to branch exchange
Big companies usually have a number like
123-0, -0 beeing the main line. You can
direct dial people in this company if you
know their extension, e.g. 123-101. And
if three digits extension are not enough,
you can make them longer as with normal
phone numbers.
So you know that your companies phone
numbers all beginn with the same prefix,
and you can directly map from extension to
the phone number.
So, you may understand why unified numbering plans are a bad idea, and variable length phone numbers are much more powerful. The question here is: Can -and will- the USA telcos lern from this?
It's the same case with area code + number dialing. The area code is analagous to the network.
In most places I've been the area code has no relationship to the person you're calling. Cities with 10 different area codes that have no basis in geography, you just basically keep guessing until you get the right area code (and call 5 wrong people before you get it right)...
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Recursive: Adj. See Recursive.
In northern Oregon, (portland/salem area) They opted to overlay a new area code over the top of a new one. The fact that many pagers and cell phones have been added to the area was the reasoning. Many people wanted them to add a new area code for pagers/cellphones, but instead they just overlayed the area codes. Instead of dialing a different area code to reach someone on a cell phone, (which would be really easy to remember!!) now my dad has a new area code to dial his friend down the street. Even his two lines in his house have different area codes.
------------------------------------------
If God Dropped Acid, Would he see People???
What are we going to do tonight Brain?
"Like other countries which may have numbers that are area code + either 7 or 8 digits long"
Until just a few years ago, my parents in England had a 5 digit phone number. They've had a four added to the beginning. The area code has four digits. But area codes aren't of fixed length in the UK either. Other parts of the country have seven digit numbers. It's all over the place!
So who was making the fuss? Any legitimate reason other than "I don't like it"?
First off, it ain't just the people who have to learn to use the new numbers. It implies the need to update all the auto-dialing devices like alarm systems, speed dial numbers, ISP's numbers for modems, and fax machines. Yet, this isn't the whole of it.
These 10-digit phone numbers have to be processed by telecom switches to make the calls go through. Check out: North American numbering Plan Administration for the latest news about proposed changes and their implementations. As others have pointed out, there were choices made at the outset about the formatting of telephone numbers that permitted the switches to make optimizations in processing the number - as it was being dialed. For example: Starts with a '2'? Then it can't be long distance. Check the local NXXs that start with a '2'.
There is also the concept of permissive dialing. Even though it's NOT REQUIRED to dial the area code, I've long looked forward to being able to put in the whole telephone number (e.g. 1-212-345-6789) in my laptop's list of ISP's telephone numbers, and let the telco sort things out.
Once the people had grown accustomed to using 10-digit numbers everywhere, then it would make sense to me to change from PERMISSIVE 10-digit dialing to MANDATORY.
There are web sites and newsgroups dedicated to telephony (teh-LEF-oh-knee). Here's a newsgroup that I've found helpful: "comp.dcom.telecom" There's also a whole slew of useful sites accessible from google's telephony area.
_ONE_ friggin number, that stays the same no matter where I move, and 2 spare digits on the end, so a cell, fax, pager, computer, all share a common number.
i.e.
AAAA-BBBB-CCCC-00 = phone
AAAA-BBBB-CCCC-01 = cell
AAAA-BBBB-CCCC-02 = fax
AAAA-BBBB-CCCC-03 = pager
AAAA-BBBB-CCCC-04 = computer
We have the technology, so why aren't we more interested in making things easier for ourselves!
--
The nice thing about standards, is that there are so many to pick from! - Anonymous
We have 10-digit dialing here in the D/FW metroplex, and it works fine as far as I'm concerned. I've often wondered when they'd go ahead and just switch the whole nation. It's rather annoying to have to remember as you're traveling whether a given area is 10-digit or 7-digit. I haven't heard anyone complain about 10-digit dialing being annoying as comparied to 7-digit.
So who was making the fuss? Any legitimate reason other than "I don't like it"?
--Joe--
Program Intellivision!
Program Intellivision!
Hey, nows your chance to add a checksum to the phone number, and add code to the firmware of new phones to not bother accepting the call if its wrong.
They come out and set up this embedded system box somewhere in your house that hooks into your demarc and the cable company cable. It looks and acts like a VoIP transponder. It even has a UPS to ensure operation in the case of a power failure.
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
I mean, come on! Just about everywhere you go you have to use 10 digit dialing right now. I don't see this as a big step at all, as local telephone companies have been doing this for years. I suppose in some backwater place where the population is less than the crowd at the local football stadium it may be an issue, but for everyone else this is old news.
Why don't they just assign everyone a URL? Area Codes mean a little, in that you know what it is for people who live around you, but they seem to change so quickly. Besides, without area codes, the phone company will have to figure out a different way to charge per minute for what in actuality are local calls.
Have you read my journal today?
I'm sure the uproar isn't just over the ability to remember another digit.
There's serious money involved in the switch, when companies have to reprint stationary, advertisements, business cards.. make sure their applications can handle longer phone numbers correctly.
Seriously, just think about how many times when you enter your phone number while ordering something, if you mistype it -- it tells you that it's formatted wrong. That's just a small example of code that needs to be changed.
Just food for thought..
-Jeff
The public switched telephone network could benefit from variable-length dialing. Dial as much as you need to make the number unique; the rest should be considered "identical to your number."
You'd probably have to terminate all dialing with the # key or something to make it work. This would render rotary phones unusable, but how much longer can we really afford to keep supporting these relics?
--
Tired of FB/Google censorship? Visit UNCENSORED!
This would allow:
- Four digit dialing -- dial "7890*" and the CO will prefix your local area code and dial prefix.
- Seven digit dialing -- dial "4567890#" and the CO will prefix your local area code.
- Ten digit dialing -- dial "1234567890" and the call will go through directly with the specified area code and prefix.
As I mentioned, this would preclude the use of rotary dial phones (but they could be adapted by using a suffix code of "11" instead, which would only be valid if the signal is a rotary pulse).This allows people the maximum flexibility -- dial only as much of a number as you need. The shorter numbers (available if they are local) don't HAVE to be used, and the suffix-code can indicate to the central office that you have finished dialing, just like pressing "ENTER" on the URL bar on your web browser indicates that you've finished entering a URL.
Neat, simple, and easy to implement.
And, of course, this would never be seriously considered.
[sigh]
--
"May I have ten thousand marbles, please?"
The issue of accidentally paying for a toll call is not significant - LD is dirt cheap these days. But the benefits don't outweigh the current convenience of 7 digit dialing within an area code. Better number conservation is still the right answer, as it has been for many years.
sulli
RTFJ.
Ottawa/Hull (Quebec and Ontario) have distinct area codes (613,819) but we are NOT required to dial the area code -- undocumented feature; it's ok if we do. So dialing 613 555-2222 is just the same as 555-2222 on any side of the river. I expect we'll be told to add the area code soon...
See here for more issues on Area Code splitting.
---
Oh, great. I can see films in the future now.
"Hold on, let me get something to write down your number. It's 127 000 000 001. O.K."
They should nationalize telephone service and assign numbers of sufficient digit length to satisfy the requirement of two numbers for each American projected to be alive twenty-five years from now. All numbers should be charged the same way via regulated prices. This way I don't have to determine which of the three carriers I need actually can serve my needs at what price. The original phone service was granted a monopoly by the government, which one of the reasons we have a phone service at all-- they were able to charge as much as they needed to in order to cover all those great Bell Labs and all the infrastructure building they needed to. I wouldn't be surprised to find that there were heavy subsidies and tax schemes used to assist in the build-up process as well.
Now we've given all this over to a bunch of competing firms who are entangled in goofy FCC regulations, and whose main competitive advantage seems to be brand recognition and confusing price structures. None of the emerging technologies (except maybe the internet, another great public project) hold even a birthday cake candle to POTS for voice transmission-- not when you consider range limitations, dropped calls, cost to build whole new infrastructure, etc etc.
Frankly, I'd prefer a government bureaucracy to the insane patchwork of regional fiefdoms for local service and insensitive ubernationals for all other service. It's not as though the prices or service can get that much worse. And then instead of this whole huge department at the FCC doing an incredible number of pseudo-regulatory activities on all those companies, we just need one congressional oversight committee.
I do not have a signature
Of course, what the FCC is talking about is above and beyond area codes, I believe. 7 digits can only hold 10,000,000 phone numbers -- but large chunks are already taken out by fixed combinations (i.e. 911, 0, 411, 1..., 0..., etc.). So for larghe metropolitan areas, like New York City or LA, it seems they are trying to increase the size of the pool of numbers to avoid adding more area codes.
But what is the difference between a 10-digit number and dialing an area code plus 7 more digits? Perhaps there is a difference on the backend, but to the user it seems it would be the same. So why all the fuss?
The biggest problem, in my mind, is that it has long been rumored that humans are poor at memorizing sequences that are more than 7 digits long. Of course, I remember what local area code someone is in separately from the number itself, so its more like associating a 3-digit number with a 7-digit one.
I personally find the dial 1 requirement convenient as it is universal. It's like area codes in many other countries that all begin with 0 (in Japan: Tokyo=03, Osaka=06, Kyoto=075); all LD calls begin with the same digit, so it's very difficult to forget that you're dialing LD.
sulli
RTFJ.
--
Americans are bred for stupidity.
sarcasm.start();
Yes - this would truly be a tragedy. Imagine a dark future where you are required to dial 12 maybe 13 numbers!
We must stand and fight! The future depends on us!
If people are required to dial more than 8 numbers for a phone call, stop and imagine the impact on the chiiilldreen. Please wont someone think of the children! What will this do to our prescious bodily fluids?!? Run! Panic! Hide!
sarcasm.end();
Eric
--
Be who you are...and be it in style!
Is this the system where you would dial the area code before the number (e.g., 703-555-1212 instead of just 505-1212) even on local calls? If so, they're already doing this in a number of places (including VA, where I live). It's tough to tell from the article....
If it ain't broke, it doesn't have enough features yet.
That doesn't work for people who live near the border of the area code. You can live in the Washington, D.C. area and have a local calling area that overlaps five different area codes (DC 202, MD 301 and 240, VA 703 and 571).
... tens of millions of new local phone numbers beginning with the digit "1" or "0."
I don't know about you, but to me this makes more sense if it refers to a "1" or "0" at the beginning of the current seven digit portion of the number. Seven digit numbers cannot begin with a "1" or "0" because that would indicate a long distance call, but if everyone were to switch to ten digit dialing, there would be a whole new range of xxx-0xx-xxxx and xxx-1xx-xxxx numbers that weren't usable before. This would make 25% more numbers possible in every area code. The new ten digit numbers could still exclude "1" and "0" from the first position to help avoid confusion over long distance dialing.
$ man reality
Obliteracy: Words with explosions
And just how do you dial a url on the standard 12 key touch tone phone?
To dial "g" you hit the number "1" 1 time?
To dial "o" you hit the number "6" 3 times?
To dial "a" you hit the number "2" 1 time?
To dial "t" you hit the number "8" 1 time?
To dial "s" you hit the number "7" 3 times?
To dial "e" you hit the number "3" 2 times?
Wow, you are already up to 12 key presses, and you still don't have anything close to a useful url...
-Joe
The worry now is, with the explosion [Boom!] of cel phones, modems, spoiled kids with own phones, that the telcos will run out of area codes. Seems like they ought to just leapfrog and start us on the new numbering scheme, we'll be on eventually.
The number you have dialed, 555-555-555-5555 is not a working number, please check the number and dial again. Thank you.
--
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Actually, the cost is going down down down. The day of portable 10 digit phone numbers will be here quite soon. The major limiting factor is that not areas can immediately participate. Number portability already exists between local phone companies in most metropolitan areas. The technology has been built; it just needs to be scaled up.
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
Just add two more digits: AAAA-BBBB-CCCC-00-01 = phone1 AAAA-BBBB-CCCC-00-02 = phone2 AAAA-BBBB-CCCC-00-03 = phone3 AAAA-BBBB-CCCC-01 = cell AAAA-BBBB-CCCC-02-01 = fax1 AAAA-BBBB-CCCC-02-02 = fax2
----------------------------------
"We're sorry, but the website you're trying to reach has been disconnected."
I sometimes wonder if people read before responding... The whole idea of using DNS on top of phone-based IPs would be to KEEP a single identifier for you/your phone.
Maybe I'm the only person who has trouble getting a new number out the all the people that have my old one. Maybe it isn't such a big deal. Yeah, stationary needs to be changed, records all over the place, business cards, etc., but I guess I'm the only one who finds that a PITA.
Might as well keep the crappy system we have now, since it apparently isn't a problem.
--
"The urge to save humanity is almost always a false front for the urge to rule." --H.L. Mencken
I think 10 digit dialing is a great idea...
EXCEPT...
Our crappy phone system at work DOESN'T WORK WITH IT! I haven't been able to call home since they did an area code split and I work and live in different area codes.
How stupid, now I won't be able to call ANY local numbers. I wish they would just dump this stupid system, but they'll probably give the idiotic vendor till 2002 to fix it.
ARGH!
-- IANAEG - I am not an elder god.
Here in Maryland, we have overlapping area codes, so (at the time) Bell Atlantic implemented 10-digit phone numbers. It's really not all that difficult to handle.
I only have problems when I'm in an area of the country that doesn't have the same issues, and try to dial the area code before the number (like when I was in Delaware last year, and had to use a pay phone for directions).
What's 3 more digits per dial, anyway? Especially in this age of speed dial phones....
--
"The urge to save humanity is almost always a false front for the urge to rule." --H.L. Mencken
The 10 digit dialing in Atlanta, and also 4 digit dialing in a small town I used to live in not too long ago. I don't think either is really superior. I write down numbers anyways because they tend to get reversed in my mind, even with the 4 digit numbers. That's what palm pilots/cellphone number storage/address books/paper/etc. is for. And as far as dialing the extra 3 digits as compared to most places (with 7 digit dialing) it's not going to take much more effort. It would be good to have a nationwide standard on these things, especially for those of us that travel a lot and forget what to do.
Mas vale cholo, que mal acompañado.
I have to disagree on two counts. First, there simply isn't a computer in every home in the states, much less one that can handle voice-over-IP.
Secondly, I'd rather not have the FCC regulating (and dicking about with) my IP voice calls. Can you imagine having to pay tolls on long-distance IP calls? Come now.
--Just Another Pimp A$$ Perl Hacker
El riesgo vive siempre!
Before we get really ambitious with something like a common number for all your devices, let's get local number portability. If local numbers were portable there would be *no shortage* of telephone numbers. 10 digit numbers with no 1 or 0 to start the area code or the exchange is 8^2(10^8) = 6.4 billion phone numbers. With a population of ~275 million that's more than 20 phone numbers for every man, woman, child, and little baby in the country.
The whole problem is that there are some exchanges with tons of unused numbers and others that are full. Each area code has 8 million numbers. If we got local number portability, all 8 million would be used. Now *that* would sure beat overlays and splits, let alone mandatory 10 digit dialing just to reclaim 0 and 1.
In the UK we have had three major changes to telephone numbers in roughly six years.
For example, for Central London the area code used to be 01. This was changed to 071, which was then changed to 0171, which has now changed to 0207.
I just feel sorry for all those small businesses that have to change all their stationary whenever their area code changes.
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Moderator's essentials
Infoworld has reported that the fcc has declined to force 10 digit dialing
As x approaches total apathy I couldn't care less.
As far as this being necessary I really don't understand. Where I live now (Iowa) we just split the 319 area code. This gives the ~2 million people in Iowa 5 area codes or a total of 50 million possible phone numbers. I realize that some of these start with 0 or 1 or x11 and can't be used but it just seems pretty excessive. How can the system be this inefficient? Do we really need to have 25 phone#s per person?
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I don't want free as in beer. I just want free beer.
Since Wireless will eventually take over the phone industry, why not fix the wireless to work with IP's, and leave local phones alone. That way the change happens gradually and is more accepted, because younger people are more likely to accept the change than people on social security.
Just my opinion...
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Good quote, too many chars. Seriously, the slashdot 120 char limit sucks!
Here in Atlanta we've been using 10 digit numbers for a few years, and additional exchanges are slowly added now and again. We've got 404, 770, and 678. I don't know how many more will be added over time, but with the increase in mobile phones and other devices utilizing phone numbers, it's inevitable.
In California, the number of available plates is further limited by the fact that there are only two standard issue license plate formats on the road. The six digit plate, only seen on older cars, which uses the format XXX111 where X is a letter and 1 is a number, and the seven digit plates which are currently issued using the format 1XXX111.
Given those limitations, and the space issue, I think your figure is a tad bit too high. For instance, a 7 digit license plate cannot choose all 7 digits from a pool of 37 characters, it can choose 3 digits from a pool of 26 and 4 digits from a pool of 10. I'm too lazy to do my own calculations, though, so feel free to flame me :)
ToiletDuk (58% Slashdot Pure)
Remember, ten digit dialing just means you have to dial the area code.
I believe that in most places, the current system is that if you are dialing an area code, you first dial a '1.' If you are not dialing an area code, you do not first dial a '1,' even if it is a long distance number. Some phone companies will, on request, block 7-digit dialing for non-local calls.
Now if they wanted to make my phone number be something like (xxx) xxx-xxxx-xxx, then that would be a pain, not only for remembering phone numbers, but also for all the old phone equipment that has the current system burned in firmware. Even if the equipment is upgradable, the cost of doing so would be significant.
...we're moving to that come the beginning of the year. We can already dial it, it's not yet mandatory though.
I don't know a single person who thinks this is any sort of "big deal".
(Oh my god, I have to remember what area code he's in and press 3 more buttons!)
Get with the times, amerika, and stop being so digitally lazy (both finger and law, come to think of it!)
mindslip
It is inane that we switch over to 10 digit numbers if we are going to move to 11 or 12 at some point in the foreseeable future. Heloooo! Humans resist change. Therefore, make changes that will work for long periods of time, not temporary fixes.
Let's see... Other similar instances where a lack of foresight caused huge hassles for us humans: The 640k barrier, y2k, potentially IPv4, and SUV gas mileage (well, the hassles will come later on that one, trust me).
Wouldn't it be simpler just to go with 12 digits in the long run.
Don't blame the telephone companies. The FCC has prohibited the telephone companies from putting mobile phones and pagers in their own area code, they consider the practice to be anti-competitive. New York is an exception, the FCC grandfathered that area code allocation.
They ran out of prefix codes.
This happened because there are lots of rate centers (billing areas), and each rate center needs its own prefix (NXX) code. Now, with competition, each carrier needs its own NXX within each rate center that it's in. That eats up NXXs faster than Pac-Man.
There are technical solutions. NXXs can be shared among up to ten carriers by using hte next digit to identify carriers, so for instance 924-5 goes to VeriZontal and 924-6 goes to AT&T Local. Some states have ordered it, but some haven't, thus worsening things.
Even better, telephone numbers could be shared from a common pool, since they are already portable (can be moved to a different local carrier). A phone number is now like a DNS name, NOT an IP address. So a neutral pool registry could let carriers assing numbers from the common pool, and East Frog Dick (population 133) wouldn't need five prefix codes. BUT the FCC hasn't ordered that (the incumbent telcos are opposed to giving up their numbering advantages).
The US & Canada International country code is +1
Convienient, isn't it?
The Los Angeles/Orange County region is stopping it... it was proposed here a few years ago, and people had fits about it...that was back when LA was 213, OC was 714, and 'the valley' was 818. Since then, its become less of an issue, since dialing 11 numbers is almost required ( LA is 213, 210, 323, OC is 714, 949, the valley is 818, 626, and there's also a few in the outter lying regions that used to be 714/818 that are now 909, 661, etc).
The logic in this move is basically that the mass of new numbers caused a mass of new area codes, and now dialing the extra digits is almost mandatory anyway, so why not just take the extra step and force people to dial them to free up more numbers.
Mooniacs for iOS and Android
Granted, I have their nationwide plan, but I have to dial all areacode-prefix-last4 all the time on my phone, even local stuff.
Of course, this will mostly go away if we zap long distance charges in the USA. What a benefit to the consumer! Watch the rapidly declining long-distance rates, and notice how Sprint is already tying their rates to flat fees [following somewhat the idea of flat-rate ISP services].
Now, where have I read the abolition of LD calls before? Oh, yeah, Arthur C. Clarke's 2001. But he had the end-date for LD calling as 12/31/1999. I guess that would be a Y2K problem, huh?
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-- Geof F. Morris
Did they really run out of numbers or did/do they do a really crappy job of managing/salvaging the numbers they know about? It seems a combination of new area codes and filling up the exchanges should more than fix the set of required numbers. Maybe it has to do with how they allocated per CO. But is is possible there is a large number of dead numbers out there that haven't been reclaimed? Anyone know about this?
By analogy I work for a company with a Class "A" internet space and we ran out of IP addresses in many regions of the world and I'd be shocked if in the worst case possible we used or legitimately reserved even 20% of that space.
I live in London, England, and we already did something like this over the last few years. In fact, we've done it a lot. Here's some information:
Originally, London had the "area code" 01-xxx-xxxx
Around 15 years ago (?) this changed to inner london (071-xxx-xxxx) and outer london (081-xxx-xxxx)
Eight (?) years ago the whole country changed, adding a "1" onto of all area codes, so London became 0171-xxx-xxxx and 0181-xxx-xxxx.
Last year, several large cities (manchester, birmingham, and of course, london) changed to have new number, again. Now, london is 020-7xxx-xxxx and 020-8xxx-xxxx. The most significant change here is that all local numbers change due to this too. With the other changes local numbers stayed the same (xxx-xxxx, no prefix), but now you needed a 7 or 8 just to dial the number locally as well...
All these changes were due to shortage in numbers. I am surprised this hasn't risen its head sooner in the USA.
So what can i tell you about them? They are a) disruptive, b) obviously costly to the Telco (and to businesses!), and c) shows they have no forward planning nor vision of what future demand will be.
Every one of these "upgrades" in London were promised to be the last. Can you imagine if this sort of thing happened with domains? We're seeing it happening with IPs, at least IPv6 has enough foresight to not need to be expandable hopefully ever again...
In short, moving to a 10 digit number with an eye to expand later to 11 and 12 is short-sighted and will lead only to further disruption. If you anticipate the demand will be there, upgrade to 12 immediately.
Fross
North American Numbering Plan Forum presents my alternative. It ends up with 8-digit local dialing (4+4), which should be adequate for all but the largest metro areas (which will need two area codes). It also sorts the area codes into geographic, nongeographic/functional and an expanded freephone (800, etc.) space.
Implementation of such a change will take years, because there are necessary transition phases, the first of which is to move to mandatory 10-digit local dialing. Assume that that is inevitable; the only question is when. The plan I discuss has no flag days, plenty of "permissive" time for every stage of transition, and makes new numbers predictable.
The web site is a Delphi board, which means that it has its own discussion forum. I dont' know if it's a good idea to advertise it on /. :-) but hey it could use some activity!