Slashdot Mirror
11 Digit Dialing Comes Home to New York
Traicovn writes "The NY Times (free registration, yadda yadda) is carrying an article about 11 digit dialing coming to the city of New York for all phone calls, including inner city calls. Yes, that means even to dial across the street you will have to dial 1-xxx-xxx-xxxx. Eventually as the phone number system fills up because of more people having cellphones/pager/fax and a home/office phone line we may see this happening in more cities across the nation or the NANPA may have to intervene by making phone numbers longer in general."
Why not just give every phone an IP adress?
No, first you dial the country code. Yes, and then the area code. Now the city code... and now the local extension...
...
Fool! You dialled to KFC, not home!
Stupid alien.
Start supporting number-sharing? I have 3 phone lines, but only one of them is ever used to receive calls....
Clear, Dark Skies
You caught up to what Illinois has done for about a year now.
In Massachussetts, we've had 11-digit dialing required for at least a year. I'm suprised that New York is just getting to this point. There's a whole lot more phones in NYC than here.
One-two-one-two-eight-six-seven-five-three-oh niyeeeeeiyne!
So 10-digit == 11-digit dialing, basically, no?
blakespot
-- Heisenberg may have slept here.
iPod Hacks.com
This has been in Chicago for over a year now!!
How can people manage phone numbers that are 11 digits long?? Is whoever controls this sytem doesn't see where this is going? Why isn't anyone trying to come up with a better solution? Thank God this isn't happening here in Israel(well, we Are quite smaller... ;)
... and except for the week it happened (and listening to the "you must dial the area code" message umpteen times because your fingers arent trained to dial the extra 3 digits to call down the street), it isnt so bad. In fact, down south they have a very large local calling area, which more than makes up for having to dial extra digits. I dont know about New Yorks call pricings, but who cares if you have to dial a "1" before every call now, as long as its not considered a toll call.
This is my sig. Its pathetic.
Why do they have to dial 1? In Toronto and Vancouver (Canada) they have had their area codes overlaid for quite some time and they only have to dial 10 digits.
get a cellphone and you don't need to think about numbers.
just search a name from the list and press dial
Here in the UK, major cities have had to change their numbers twice in recent years to accomodate number growth. It's not such a big deal, though. At present london numbers are 11 digits long 020x xxx xxxx , though the 020 can be omitted when dialling locally. Shouldn't the surprise be that this hasn't happened sooner?
all my life i've associated the 212 area code with new york. couldn't they have done NAT with phone numbers so we could all still use 212 ;) .
smd4985
Maybe we should go the way of IP. You would only have to add A-F on the phone keypad.
From the article it's not clear, but here in eastern PA we too must dial area codes, but the "1" before the number is often not required.
Thus it's likely that many folks in NY city will only have to dial 10 digits, not 11 as suggested by the article.
Nothing new. Wonder why it took so long for New York to get it? My parents live in LA and they don't have it either. Strange.
4 years ago, when I was working in Germany, they had some ingenious system :
:)
Normal phone numbers may be 8 digits long but it was possible to compose less number, yet access someone, generally a standard...
It was also possible to compose >8-digit numbers to phone somebody behind a switch or something so...
So at least, it was still possible to avoid composing extra digits if there was only one remaining possibility for a given number.
Sorry if this is unclear : I have never been very aware of phone technology... So if somebody could explain this I'd be quite happy to know
Trolling using another account since 2005.
I work in a maths department at a leading university and I can tell you that the optimal method for allocating telephone numbers is a subject of great interest at the moment, having, as it does, many similarities with the travelling salesman problem. Hopefully, we'll be able to solve it in the next couple of years, which should mean that going to 11 or possibly 12 digit numbers can be avoided.
10 digits can represent 10 billion phone numbers.
There was an article on area code allocation not too long ago that talked about this problem.
Easy solution... Just call up your phone company and tell them you want trunk hunting set up across the three lines that you have. In my experience this hasn't cost any extra, and it'll cause one number to roll over to the next phones if the first is busy.
Is this what you're looking to do? It works well and doesn't cost anything.
In Europe the cell numbers are separate from home lines, so you know when you are calling a cell or not.
Here in America all the numbers are mixed so when you dial a number you can't be that sure it's a cell. This has caused the numbers to fill up FAST.
Here
Paul
it's been over 2 years since we were forced to start dialing 10 digits with every call. It was supposedly due to the fact that our area code (704)was full, but I have yet to see the 'new' area code used. In fact, even though you 'have' to say "704" when telling someone your number, it's pretty annoying, since 704 is still the only zipcode used here.
The truth doesn't care what I think.
Atlanta has had 10-digit dialing for at least 2 years now. (whats the point of dialing the 1?). How exactly is this news????
Now what they need is a more efficient way of passing these numbers to other people.
Based on anecdotal evidence, I beleive that the various phone companies are hording number exchanges. Here in Chicago, there are many prefixes that are not available in adjacent area codes. It goes along with the general take no prisoner's approach the various ILEC's take in dealing with competition.
Sure someone can make an intelligent phone with a smart embedded controller that can detect when you dial seven digits for a local call and append the appropriate prefix.
BTW it wasn't more than 30 years ago NY city was still using numbers like PENNSYLVANIA 6-5000 (going by air checks of radio stn WOR around 1970).
try { do() || do_not(); } catch (JediException err) { yoda(err); }
phone.myname.newyork.usu s
phone.mycompany.newyork.
If new phones looked up someone's name in a remote DNS, we wouldn't need 967-1111 or 5-FLOWER or SEX-YOGA. Add a voice rec program (remote again) to new cell phones. Make some "rules" to recognize old numbers and phase them out.
By the time numbers get so long as to be a pain in the but, all phones will probably have their own IP address and DNS name anyway.
Maybe some rich smart ass will see this and be inspired.
10 digit dialing is a good thing. What needs to happen is a nation wide push to get everyone to use 10 digit dialing for everything. You could even tie it in with the so-called War on Terrorism or something to get Joe Sixpack to jump on it. This will eliminate all the problems of needing a 1- for some areas, not for others, area code for some inter-LATA calls, not for others, etc. After all, most people are used to it from their cell phones, so how much of a switch would it really be?
Ok, mod me down now, that was pretty off topic. Sorry.
we have 612,651,763, and 952. They do not require a 1 so it is only 10 digits.... Theyre not long distance but you still have to dial them
Somebody help me get a clue: At first glance, it would seem that a seven digit number would be good for almost 10 million phone numbers, while adding three more digits would take us up to more than one phone number per inhabitant of our planet.
Why so many digits? Why are we running out of phone numbers?
And, while we're at it, why not assign each individual a phone number that they keep for life, no matter where they move, like a domain name? I'd imagine that modern telco equipment could support this by now.
The worst part about 10-digit local calls is never being sure whether it's free or toll.
Calling your neighbor across the street... probably not toll. Calling the local blockbuster... well, PROBABLY not. Calling a plumber you looked up in the phone book? No way to tell really, without committing to memory the HUGE tables of "local to" exchanges in the front of the phone book. (I used to develop automated calling systems and I've had to deal with this for years.)
It turns your phone bill into a reverse lottery every month.
To ensure perfect aim, shoot first and call whatever you hit the target
This will only drive cell phone use. People will not want to remember the numbers, so they will have to use their pda(synched with cell phone) or the contact list from the cell phone itself.
Why is whenever the US catches up with the rest of the world in phone technology it is considered "news"?
We've been using 11 digit number in the UK for years. A 5 digit area code and a 6 digit number. It's not exactly a hard concept to grasp.
although theres too much infrastructure in place...like the fact that phones physically have 10 buttons, you could keep number size down by using an alphabet.
-- -- --
Help my mini cause: My journal
Well, they *could* have used NAT if your 646 phone was using a 212 phone as a gateway. Also, the init code on the 212 phone would have to have an "iptables -j SNAT --to 646" somewhere in there.
In Jacksonville, FL, the Area Code is 904. St. Augustine has the same Area Code, 904. Yet, when I call St Augustine, it's long distance. WTF!
When most phones these days have an address book built in.
In the longer term it would seem sensible to use a telephony equivalent to DNS, so consumers wouldn't have to use a number at all.
Is there any possible way to give individuals as many unique identification numbers as needed for either phone lines or for IPs without having to revamp the system very few years? Eventually this 11-digit system won't be enough, and eventually IPv6, although less likely, won't be enough, right? So, is it mathematically possible to create a system with the structure necessary and still have infinite combinations?
It just seems that this is an issue that could be avoided with a little foresight and one more major revamp.
through Google
Well, not exactly 11 digits -- 10 digits (you can drop the leading 1). Once you get used to it, it's not that bad... a lot of people made a big deal about it when it rolled out, but now I never hear any complaints.
In fact, it looks weird when I'm someplace else that doesn't have 10 digit dialing (what's the area code???)
It's better this way -- you either get everyone to use 10/11 digits, or you divide the existing area-codes up into more area codes, and have everyone re-print business cards, signs, advertisements, etc, etc, etc... that ends up causing more trouble than just adding a few extra digits.
dennis
And this was in the 1980's
We had a Rotary phone on a Party Line and we only had to dial 4 digits.
So is NANPA still requiring each line provider to buy a block of numbers and assign their users out of that block?
Are they blocking number portability? That is, can I take a Verizon number that I've had for years at my business and sign up with a dial tone competitor and keep the same number? (Yes, phone switches are smart enough to handle this and route a number anywhere on to any network.)
With Michael Powell at the FCC as a sock puppet of the RBOCs, things like number portability that might promote dial tone competition get squashed. It would also reduce the need for new area codes because the numbers that we do have would get used more efficiently.
But it is easier to get customers to carry the burden and expense of dialing extra digits (think of reprogramming speed dial numbers and fax numbers on machines). Then you can minimize competition and keep profits and campaign contributions maximized.
I think colonize Mars is sooner than we through, 1 for Earth, 2 for Mars, ... And within a few year, we will need an extra digits for another star system. Hurrah for humanities.
One small step for our finger, one giant leap for humanities.
Yeah, but I'm sure the folks in Olde Springfield get to keep the old 212 area code.
Endless arguments over trivial contradictions in books written by ignorant savages to explain thunder in the dark.
our favorite Chinese-food delivery place may be just down the block, but starting Feb. 1 that kung pao shrimp will be four digits farther away.
That is when New Yorkers will have to start using an area code when calling a local telephone number, even if it is in the same area code. The days when a phone number was just a name and five digits -- say, Pennsylvania 6-5000 -- are now an even more distant memory. It will now take 11 digits, including the 1, to call across the street.
If callers do not dial the area code, they will hear a recorded message asking them to hang up and dial again, using the area code, said Daniel Diaz Zapata, a Verizon spokesman.
Verizon has taken out advertisements in newspapers, put up billboards and sent notices to customers in the hopes of helping people avoid the chaos that will undoubtedly ensue. With the number of devices attached to phone lines these days, this is no small task. "People will need to reprogram speed dialing lists, fax lists, dial-up modems and call-forwarding," Mr. Diaz Zapata said.
The reasons behind the change are complex. It is not simply the need for more phone numbers, as many people believe. Adding new area codes takes care of that problem, and New York City has received three new area codes since 1992 -- 917 and 646 in Manhattan, and 347 in the rest of the city -- to help cope with the exploding demand for phone lines as customers have added pagers, fax machines, cellphones and modems.
Officials in less densely populated places simply split their area in two, with half the population keeping the old area code and the other half getting a new one. But in big cities, like New York and Boston, regulators use an overlay approach, which has meant that people who live next door to each other can and do have different area codes. City Hall, for example, uses the 212 area code. But since 9/11, which disrupted phone service in Lower Manhattan, the Police Department, across the street, has used the 646 area code.
In 1996, in order to simplify things and make it easier to foster competition in the local telephone service market, the Federal Communications Commission began requiring cities with overlaid area codes to use the area code when dialing locally.
New Yorkers did not take the requirement lying down. The New York Public Service Commission and the Consumer Federation of America asked for a waiver. The F.C.C. turned them down, but they appealed and were overruled in 2001.
This is more important to the rest of the world since it has come to New York?
Maryland has had 10 (and in some places 11) digit dialing for years because of sharing it's boarder with West Virginia, DC, Virginia, Delaware, and Pennsylvania.
If New Yorker's would get out more, they would realize the world doesn't revolve around them.
If the slashdot editor's got out more, they would realize that things *do* take place first outside of New York.
Thanks you insensitive clods.
-- You don't shoot to kill, you shoot to stay alive.
In Canton, Ohio we've had 10-digit dialing for 2-2.5 years now.
I can deal with all the new paperwork (business cards, invoices, etc.) that I'll be buying, but that's the least of my problems.
I'm in the rental business, and my phone number (including area code) is printed/painted/etched multiple times on every item in my rental stock. That's a few hundred items to scrap and repaint. And it'll always look like crap.
Oh well, I had nothing better to do with my summer.
NetInfo connection failed for server 127.0.0.1/local
I remember looking at an old phone book and noticed that the phone numbers were only five digits at the time. Obviously, they moved up to seven digits in order to handle the increasing amount of phones that people were starting to get.
So why haven't we added an 8th digit to phone numbers yet? It would effectively give area codes 10 times more numbers and allow much more room for expansion than adding area code after area code.
In Soviet Russia, Trojan exploits YOU!
It's a good thing Homer Simpson doesn't live in NYC... he had a tough time when Springfield was split into two area codes... Imagine if he had a cell phone in NYC!
"You killed my yogurt!" --Fred Fredburger
You WIN-CE phone is HACKed by CHINESE
The country code for the US is (conveniently) "1". So what happens now? A call that was "1 (234) 567-8999" is now "1 1 (234) 567-8999" ?
I hope this does not become recursive...
"Well it's not Victory - but then it's not Death either."
A couple of years ago they added this to the Boston area. I tend to think that the article is mistaken on one small point, and that is the leading one. The main reason for requiring 10-digit dialing, as I understand it, is so you DON'T have to dial the leading 1 when calling a local call -- IE to call a neighboring town (or even my next door neighbor) I would dial 10 digits, to call California I still have to dial 11, as always. I'm not sure what the technical reasons with switching and all are, but I would guess this is the case in NYC as well. And I'm very surprised that this has no been implemented there already--I would think they'd have much more of a phone overpopulation problem than Boston.
New York has not REQUIRED 11 digit dialing for dialing in your area code, but there are now five area codes in New York City, 212/646 overlap, 718/347 overlap, and 917 is a little up in the air right now but was originally for cell phones, pagers and faxes.
646 has at least been planned for at least 8 years I would say, and now many people in Manhattan have 646 area codes for their home phone. 347 is also appearing in Brooklyn. 917 has been a national oddity for longer than I can remember. I would say 10 years minimum, probably longer.
Thus you only need to 11 digit dial when you are dialing someone who does not have a number in YOUR area code.
It seems really ridiculous to require 11 digit dialing in your own area code. Perhaps if we didn't USE area codes but had an entirely random string numbers 11 digit dialing as a requirement is obviously a necessity.
I don't read or respond to AC posts
In addition to the other posts, there's one more basic reason: dialing out of your area code in NYC has always required the 1. The 1 was originally required so the system explicitly knew the next 3 digits were the US area code. Since I was a kid growing up in NYC it always had multiple area codes, first just 212 for Manhattan and 718 for the other 4 boroughs. So everyone is used to dialing either 7 or 11 digits. I've never in my life dialed 10 and neither has anyone else here, or their PBXs or faxes or anything else that can dial. With everyone here used to 11 digits and all of our electronics trained appropriately, it makes sense to stick with 11 instead of moving everyone to 10.
Of course I still don't get why the system can't work the way it does now. If I don't dial a 1 then why can't it assume I'm dialing to another number within my own area code? The phone companies are desparately hanging on to their legacy systems and only a few startups have tried going all digital.
Developers: We can use your help.
In Philadelphia we have been dial like that for over 3 years now. Time to move to voice over IP
the 847 area code for the north and northwest suburbs of chicago has had a 224 overlay for a while. My parents live in one of those tiny little towns where everybody still has the same prefix, so my dad just programmed speed dial button for 1-847-NNN and it's almost like being back in the good old days of 4 digit dialing. :)
and you don't have to dail the "1".
Simple enough question. Who, especially /.ers, actually keys in numbers these days?
I have all of my more common numbers saved in the memory of my house phone. I speed dial or page through the memory rather than dialing.
The cell-phone is even better. I now have all of my numbers sync'd to the phone from my laptop and are searchable. If I get really lazy I can use bluetooth and do the phone number lookup on my phone or PDA.
The only numbers I actually dial are ones that I'm not going to dial often. It's really not much of an issue to me.
[disclaimer] I live in Europe where 10+ digit dialing from cell phones is the norm. [/disclaimer]
You may think me a tired, old, cynic. I'd have to disagree about the tired bit.
141.210.54.217
Then you could make area codes look like:
141.210.54.0/24 for office buildings, or 141.0.0.0/8 for larger areas.
Of course, if they want to be proactive, perhaps we could just go to IPV6 directly (although that's alot of dialing!)
I lived in Atlanta when they got 770 and 678... and it was about a week of confusion, but nothing terrible...
Now I live in Philadelphia, with 215, 610, and 484, and it's still no big deal (I still have my 678 atlanta cell phone number!)
Granted, it is a pain in the arse not knowing what's local and what's long distance anymore - and I'm sure the LECs got what they were going for with that...
What's worse, a lot of local phone services here have different strata of local calling areas, that all have different rates. So, we have intra-LATA toll, inter-LATA toll, and heaven forbid we call across the river to New Jersey..
Thing get even more complicated when said large city sits on a border with 2 or 3 other states. New York's suburbs basically expand out into New Jersey, Connecticuit, and Upstate NY, and there are even people in Philadelphia who grab the train into the city every day. I imagine there are far more than the 3 or 4 NYC area codes to worry about in that case...
Like everyone else has said, get a cell phone, or at the very least, one of those $99 PDAs...
Adding the 1 doesn't make any sense. That must be an error. The 1 is simply a steering digit which signals the switch to the type of call. In this case, the 1 comes from the country code for the US and Canada. The one gets stripped off by the local access switch, and the call basically routes based on the 10 digit number. (There are some other digits stuffed in front of the number at that point, but that's not relevant here.) So adding the 1 doesn't create any new numbers. I don't think they want to create a "2" for example. That would end up created a second Country code for the United States.
What they may have to do is make the area codes 4 digits or something like that.
Incidentally, The country codes with only 1 digit are 1-US and Canada, and 2-Russia
-- -- Warning. Do not stare directly at the sun.
Originally, the code for London was 01 so a number would be 01-xxx-xxxx
Then they changed it to 071-xxx-xxxx for Inner London and 081-xxx-xxxx for Outer London. Confusion and expensive re-printing of stationery followed.
Then they changed it AGAIN to 0171-xxx-xxxx and 0181-xxx-xxxx. Confusion/expense etc.
THEN THEY CHANGED IT *AGAIN* (doh). It's now 0207-xxx-xxxx and 0208-xxx-xxxx
Anyone get the impression that someone hasn't got a clue? This country sucks.
Here
Why don't we just massively upgrade telephone numbers? We know we're going to need it in the future, bring on 15 digit numbers... same goes with IP addresses, increased them to 1024x5...
sig.
We carry Mobile phones which have this cool feature called an 'Address Book' where you can store all your friends numbers. And another feature called a 'Call List' where you can dial numbers that a) you have recently dialled or b) have recently called you.
/b
Seriously this accounts for 90% of the calls I make. Most calls involve pressing 'Yes' on my phone followed by the first letter of the persons name and then yes again.
Another cool feature is directory assistance where they just SMS you the number and you dial straight from your phone (They can also connect you but that costs a lot more).
Who needs a landline when you have all your numbers at your fingertips?
[Please type your sig here.]
You mean Sept. 11 didn't wipe out enough New Yorkers to put this off for a few years?
If they make phone numbers longer than 11 digits, it is going to take a long time to update all the software out there for the change.
http://www.askthevoid.com
Why is whenever the US catches up with the rest of the world in phone technology it is considered "news"? We've been using 11 digit number in the UK for years.
Catch up? So if we used 22-digit dialing, the US would be "ahead" of the UK in telecommunications?
Recursive: Adj. See Recursive.
Who will be the first to 100? New York's phone numbers, or car license plates in Europe?
Heeul Yeeuh dawg. We col kickin it wit our 11-digit dialin skillz, know wum shayin?
Oh wait, you meant 'intra-city calls.'
How can prefixing a '1' to every phone number increase the amount of combinations?
Wouldn't it make more sense just to add a couple of new numbers?
For example:
One, two, three, four, flig, five, six, seven, eight, nine, nelp, ten.
Actually, I've lived in Dallas my whole life, and both Dallas and Fort Worth have been exclusively 10-digit for the past several years.
.sig: No such file or directory
Adding more digits is going to suck, will be really hard to remember a phone number... They had better start letting us like pick a number if they add a ton of numbers(and replace all the phones we have with caller id :P), so we can make words up with the letters on the phone or something... I just hope we don't ever get to the point when we can do a whole sentence...
I wish it worked that way in eastern Mass. Almost every phone call I make is to my own ara code and I'm still stuck dialing 10 digits.
I got used to it pretty quickly but I find myself forgetting to dial 1 before making a long-distance call.
Since when has slashdot become the NYTimes, or NY local paper?
Lots of places have 10 or 11 digit dialing. So who cares that it's just now coming to NY?
[/troll]
Think about this: You use 212 in your home. Then you get a fax line. That's 646. Then you move to Queens where you're number is 718. The pizza place down the street is 347. Then you visit your friend who's area code is 347. You're still going to call the same pizza place, but are you going to remember to dial the area code? No, only if you're forced to do it ALL THE TIME!
"`Ford, you're turning into a penguin. Stop it.'" -Douglas Adams, THHGTTG
Wow! Amazing. You only have 11 digit phone numbers. In Denmark, we have to remember a 1000 digits just to call our neighbour.
Doesn't it cause a lot of trouble to have a limit of thousand subscribers?
............. - Oh, You were talking binary numbers there, weren't you?
We've been doing this in Massachusetts for a couple of years now. It's not really that big of an inconvenience. The real problem is when we'll have to move beyond 11 digits. You thought moving from IPv4 to IPv6 would be a problem.
"...today consumers have been conditioned to think of beer when they see a bullfrog..."
Please mod this down.
It's ridiculous.
He would have to either get a phone switch, or buy phones that can handle 3 lines.
Otherwise, if the line with the phone is busy, one of the other two lines will receive the ring, and it will never get a busy signal. He won't even know it rang. The caller won't know to try again.
Even worse, if his primary line isn't busy, a call might go to any one of the three lines, reducing the chance of him actually receiving the call to 1 in 3.
Five years ago this might have been a big deal. These days I just press the first letter of the name of who I want to call two or three times until there name comes up and then press dial... For returning calls I just press dial when their name comes up in the call log. That covers 90% of all my calls. For the rest it's no big deal.
Sig is taking a break!
In most European countries at least it is a legal requirement for primary phone lines to work in the case of a power outage. A POTS phone is powered over the line so regardless of power failure in the building it will work. A VoIP phone requires that there is network connectivity and power in order to function. VoIP services are being sold as additional phones rather than primary phones over here.
You may think me a tired, old, cynic. I'd have to disagree about the tired bit.
....11 digit dialing coming to the city of New York for all phone calls, including inner city calls.
Why would they need to do that? Just a few payphones for the drug dealers in the inner city....
--
As a matter of fact, I am a lawyer. But I play an actor on TV.
Connecticut, third smallest state, has 11-digit dialing if you're calling more than your or an adjacent "town". But here, what infuriates me every time (and is no doubt a conspiracy ;) is that, not only can I not figure out when I need more than seven digits, but the automated voice (that comes on after the three "beep" tones) says "I'm sorry, but you must dial the area code first, and then the number." So I do that, and what do I get? "[beep beep beep!] I'm sorry, you must first dial a '1', and then the area code and the number." WTF? Why couldn't the first message tell me that? So then once I decided to get ahead of the game and dial all 11 digits, knowing the call was more than 100ft from my apartment, and I then got (I'm not making this up) "[beep beep beep!] Please do not dial a '1', or the area code, to make this call." I've about given up trying to understand, what with the few shreds of sanity I have left and all. ;-)
why has no one from new york city chimed in here. why does no one from new york city ever chime in? ive irced on many networks for 8 years now and ive never seen someone from new york city. a city with such a large population, youd think the number of people on the net from there would be a good number? when i think of large canadian cities like toronto or vancouver i see TONS of people online from those places. what is it about new york city that it seems almost no one is online from there? its boggled my mind for many years.
This post shows a complete lack of understanding of the problem, the internet, or IP.
/. regulars are out of jobs deserve to be out of jobs for a reason, or haven't even got to high school yet.
Not to mention that his solution goes from solving a problem of 11 digit dialing by implimenting 12 digit dialing (and that is assuming IPv4). IPv6 will be even worse.
Now, combine his idea with IPv6 and some sort of AlphaNumeric dns type system, and then you have a headache, but somthing more along the lines of a working idea.
The fact that this got modded to a 4 shows that all the
Here in parts of NE Ohio (Akron, Canton, Mansfield, Youngstown) we've had to do this for a couple of years now because we have two area codes (330 and 234) covering the same region. Technically, though, it's really just 10 digit dialing because the leading '1' is only necessary for long distance calls.
"Lawyers are for sucks."
- Doug McKenzie
How many companies have direct dialing to every extension? Whole exchanges get filled up just so companies don't have to install a phone system to handle the company extensions?
I'm sorry, it's not my cell, and fax lines taking up the slack, it's the large company head offices taking up 5000 phone numbers and getting the CLEC to handle the hardware and take numbers away.
How about just making a corporate area code and making consumer phones not have to worry about 11 or even 10 digit dialing?
i live in manhattan and this sucks.
There are a lot of comments comparing the increasing phone number address space to the coming of IPv6.
What I wonder is whether this will at some point lead to some halfway intelligent means of hierarchical human-readable "DNS" for phone numbers?
We have DNS for IP addresses, with all of its flaws (domain squatting, centralized hierarchy, etc.) and the phone book. Most of our mobile phones have important numbers stored as names, so I don't have to remember 123-4567, but rather can just select 'Bob's Work #'.
With DNS, I can set up an address space to show what country an email address is in, what sort of organization it belongs to, what the name of the outfit it is, and what organizational unit the recipient is grouped with (bob@eng.dobbcorp.co.uk being an example.) Same with an X.500 directory structure (OU, CN, DN, etc.)
Phone numbers give me some of this information (country code, area code, and maybe a certain group of numbers being allocated to a given neighborhood. However, it's not really intuitive or reliable once you get past the area code.
Does anyone know of a works in progress to create any kind of "telephone DNS", where a phone number can be (voluntarily?) mapped to a hierarchical namespace, allowing a caller to more easily find a number? Putting phone books online seems like sort of a kludgey, inelegant solution in the long term. Plus, you don't know which John Smith you're trying to reach in New York.
Cole's Law: Thinly sliced cabbage
dont we just need a home id?
I know you are psychotic, but please make an effort.
Why? Because New York City (more specifically, Manhattan) is the center of the universe.
I kid you not.
The thing that gets me is that I don't understand how being forced to dial the area code frees up phone numbers! sure, adding an area code does this and we have had several area codes added in my area over the years (my own has changed 3 times!) but forcing 10 (or 11) digit dialing (which was done in my area about a year ago) does nothing but annoy people!
I mean, if you don't dial an area code, just ASSUME IT'S THE SAME AS THE ORIGINATING NUMBER! that's the way it always worked anyway!
plus, while they forced 10 digit dialing, they never upgraded the caller ID to display the 10 digits for local numbers so you cant just scroll through the call log and dial someone back.
Maybe I'm missing something here. Anybody?
-C
2) And, if you add the SAME number to the beginning of everything, that gives you nothing. Why would they do that?
3) I used to work on phone switch software, and the only reason I can see is that they don't want to have to differentiate between a local (i.e. 10 digit) call and a long distance (i.e. 11 digit) call. This way, the switch can run less code. No need to wait before it starts routing the call. It can start routing as soon as you start typing numbers. This, and the use of reserved area codes (\d[0,1]\d) as exchanges, was the big motivator behind the 10 digit move.
T
---- It puts the lotion on its skin or else it gets the hose again. It does this whenever it's told.
but, i've been stuck with 10 for years now.
I write code.
they,ve got to transfer it again to the calling device their contact book, etc. Not very efficient.
When I firsted moved to Mass, not only had I been living in rural Ohio, but I had no idea they had 11 digit dialing. I'd just driven over 1000 miles in 24 hours, gotten lost in Cambridge during rush hour *shiver*, then I was standing at a payphone in Brighton staring right at my brother's apt wondering why I couldn't call him. I eventually called my mom (in TN) to double check the number, then randomly tried the area code as well. I was hysterical. Why would I have to dial 11 digits to call someone 50 ft away? (yeah, phones don't exactly work that way, but I could see the building.)
On my world-band cellphone I input all numbers as +1-234-5678. That way, when I get to the UK I can still dial straight from my phonebook. And most people don't even know the US country code is 1...
"Where quality is like a dead stinking rat - you just can't miss it."
I live in the Northern-Chicago area and have had to dial 1-847-xxx-xxxx for quite sometime now.
This is the dumbest story I've seen on /. yet!
VOS/Interreality project: www.interreality.org
Area codes USED to be: [2-9][0,1][1-9]
Exchanges were: [2-9][2-9][0-9] ( i think - foggy memory )
This made them easily recognizable to the switch.
Recently, many areas of the US switched to 10 digit dialing.
The new area codes are: [2-9][0-9][0-9] (many more)
the new exchanges are: [0-9][0-9][0-9] (many more)
NOW, they're setting up for MORE area codes so that we can have:
1 - [0-9][0-9][0-9] - [0-9][0-9][0-9] - [0-9][0-9][0-9][0-9]
I'm not doing the math for you , but that's a lot more numbers than previously allowed.
T
---- It puts the lotion on its skin or else it gets the hose again. It does this whenever it's told.
Why not just assign one number, and then add to it a postfix digit which indicates which line to ring, have it default to a voice line if no postfix is dailed;
555-555-5555[-1](Home)
555-555-5555-2(FAX)
555-555-5555-3(Pager)
555-555-5555-4(Cell)
555-555-5555-n(Fido)
III.IIVIVIXIIVIVIIIVVIIIIXVIIIXIIIIIIIIVIIIIVVIII
I, like many people, am suprised that this is news. We went through this problem a few years ago in Connecticut, and they really bunged it up.
First, they split the state in to two area codes. Ok, I can live with that, but if you live on the edge of an area code a local call may require you to use the ten digit number. So this is how they "solved" that problem:
If it is a local call within your area code, you dial seven digits.
If it is a long distance call within your area code, you dial 11 digits (1 + 10).
If it is a local call outside your area code, you dial 10 digits, no 1!
And last, if it is a long distance call you go back to dialing 11 digits.
Are you confused yet? I live in Meriden (203), and not only are we on the edge of the area code, but during the switch we voted that calls to all New Haven (203), and Hartford (860) switches would be local calls in exchange for a slightly higher base monthly fee. That means that I can call some towns 30+ miles away, and it is a local call, and yet two towns over east or west is a long distance call. It also means that in order to know whether or not I am making a local call I would have to remember something like a hundred different switches. Because of this, every time I dial a new number I basically end up guessing whether or not I have to dial the area code, XOR one, OR both.
In that light New York has it much better off, 11 digits for everything, and let the phone company figure out whether or not it is local.
Long live the Speaker Bracelet
Rolo D. Monkey
We've got that - it's called TeleVantage.
> Catch up? So if we used 22-digit dialing, the US would be "ahead"
> of the UK in telecommunications?
I'm not sure what sort of arithmetic you learned at school but 22
is more than 11 (in fact, it's twice as many). So obviously, the
US be ahead of the UK if they used 22 digits. It's basic math! 22
is more than 11.
In Massachusetts, here's the basic rule:
Local calls: 10 digits (but 1 + 10 digits also works)
All LD calls: 11 digits (1 + 10 digits required)
We've had it for a couple years now. Since I use my cell phone w/ autodial, it hasn't impacted me.
We've had 11 digit dialing in the NW suburbs of Chicago for about a year or so. The weird thing about it is the city itself is covered by, I think, 2 area codes, and they do not have 11 digit dialing. The suburbs are covered by 4 area codes, and only one of them, the one that covers the northwest suburbs, requires 11 digit dialing.
I don't mind the 11 digit dialing per se, but I find it strange that it's only required in some of the 'burbs and not in the city itself. I was under the impression that there were more people in the city than out here in the 'burbs....
The dry fish swims alone.
Oops ...
Sent from my ASR33 using ASCII
I thought all US phone numbers were just 4 digits long, prefixed with 555...
And as for the UK, in a Real City(tm) it is a three digit area code (020) and an 8 digit number (72221234) which still adds up to 11. And to think my parents used to have a 3 digit phone number :-)
this completely screws up my collection of phone numbers..
Selling software wont make you money, selling a service will.
We've had 11-digit dialing in Northwest Ohio for a year or so now. Yeah, it's a pain in the ass. I wish someone would come up with a domain registry for phone numbers. :)
Josh Woodward
Probably redundant, but I'm too lazy to search.
What will the mandatory "1-" allow? More area codes.
It will unlock area codes starting with "1xx"
so that
1-1xx-555-5555
will be a valid number and will have no chance of duplicates in new york. Just the same for "0xx"
1-0xx-555-5555
unlocking 2 999 999 999 == 3^9 new numbers in north america, eventually, or at least in new york.
Simple effective solution, even if it's only temporary. Blame Moore's. Let's just hope he'll be wrong at some point.
Simple answer: They plan to use the 0xx and 1xx area codes in New York...
Nouvelles de jeux et technologies en français. TC
I can't remember how long ago we had to start using 11-digit dialing in the Pittsburgh area. It's not so bad once you get used to it.
first off, i wouldn't really call this 11 digit dialing, it's really 10 digits dialing (which a lot of places, including my home city of Philadelphia already use), plus a 1...
1 + 3 (Area Code) + 7 (Phone Number)...
in any case, what i wanted to get at was the size of information...from my college psychology classes, i seem to recall something about memory "chunks" and the ideal size for us to remember things are in blocks of 7...which is why 7 digit phone numbers worked so well...in any case, the 11 digits aren't so bad, because basically you have the 7 digits that are easy to memorize, the 3 digit area codes that are common between a lot of phone numbers, so they're easy to remember, and the 1, which you usually don't need, but isn't any big deal...
in any case, in the UK, a 6 digit number makes little sense, because as mentioned above, 7 digits is the optimal size for the brain to store, and by only using 6 instead of 7, you're losing like 9 million more possible numbers...
obviously with the 5 digit are code, there are more area code options, but i'd rather have a bigger base of phone number options, and a smaller base of area codes, then the other way around...
anyway, just my thoughts...
"Facts are meaningless. You could use facts to prove anything that's even remotely true." - Homer Simpson
Assign 6 more digits (letters, actually) and make life a lot easier. You can have over 4 billion eight digit numbers. Sooner or later communication prices would drop to a single nation-wide rate, and then you can abolish all calling areas and give out a single 8 digit number to anyone. Think bigger why don't you, how about a world wide hexadecimal number consisting of 9 digits (over 68 billion combinations). Short of politics, there's no real trouble setting something like this up. I won't mind dialing a 9 digit number to reach anyone in the world. Think "74A-58C-348-19E".
Or rather, the number of digits.
I used to work for an telecoms equipment manufacturer, and you wouldn't believe how much BONE-HEADED CODING there was in their American products. Their products are split into "North American" and "International" code bases, and all the North American code without fail is hardwired to exactly 10 digits and a single routing/decoding algorithm. The international code has been totally rewritten, firstly to allow for the maximum of 24 digits, plus it allows for a variety of digit decoders, so the switches can be sold in any country and not just America.
To be honest, I'm really quite proud of the international products, it's just a shame that there needs to be this divide -- the American code should have been written properly in the first place. I blame the stagnation of the US phone numbering scheme as the #1 reason behind such lazy switch programming. It's good to see it being shaken up now and again.
Does my bum look big in this?
So, if you're just calling another person at Brown, there's no outside line, and no PSC, and the number's only 5 digits long. Pretty easy. But if you're calling long distance, you've got a total of 19 digits to dial, a pretty huge pain in the ass.
"The question of whether a computer can think is no more interesting than that of whether a submarine can swim" -EWD
BT and OFTEL have had years to sort out the mess that is the UK phone system but they never bothered. "Oh , shall we have 2 digit area codes , no , lets make it 4 for the big cities , oh hold on , that little town will have 5 , but hey we don't have enough numbers in london now , lets divide its area code into 2 , 3 digit codes and have the local area codes 4 digits unlike everywhere else where they're 3 , err no , I mean 6 , err , except where there arn't any." London has had *4* area code changes in the last 15 years and other cities and towns have suffered the same problem , apparently to create more numbers but these new numbers never appear. Local areas in london now begin with 7 or 8 and have done so for about 3 years now. Still no sign of those codes beginning 1-6 or 9. Where are they??
That would work better at least, but how about having two buttons on phones request contact info and send contact info. The person you want to send contact info to pushes the request contact info on his phone, which sends a signal to your phone, in which you can confirm you want him to have contact info by pressing the send contact info button. (but then there's the question of how the system identifies that your phone is the correct phone to send to)
Homer: Which phone company?! There are hundreds of them! They all keep changing their names..
Marge: I think it's Quamquack.
Bart: No, I think it's Niagular.
Marge: No, last week they became Verdiquar.
Verizon has * and # four character numbers, why can't they have something like a **SLASHDOT number - I think characters and double pounds and stars would be very popular.
I have heard they are also going to do this in Atlanta (11 didgit numbers) - there's no way people will be able to remember all of those without a PDA / organizer or auto dial.
How would the system distinguish a new three digit by not dialing to the number it reached first in the common system?
Yell & scream & rant & rave... it's no use... you need a shaaaave ~ Bugs Bunny
I live in rural western Pennsylvania and we switched to 10 digit dialing about two years ago. For those of you who aren't familial with this part of the country, we have a population of roughly one million people in the area codes where this is enforced. New York has more than ten times our population and they managed to last two more years? Further proof that the local Telcos are incompetant.
-Shadow
Computers today are easily capable of dealing with the problem on a finer grained basis. For example, a cheap home PC can store and retrieve info concerning tens of millions of phone numbers in real time. Each new phone number could be allocated from a central source individually. No big deal.
Another thing that bothers me is that if you have a dial 7 area, you often can't dial 11. I should be able to dial the country code too! The phone number should be an address, not a route. I don't want to hear "You must dial a one...". If the computer knows I needed it, it should just complete the call.
On my cell phone, I always put in the dial 11, so that it still works when dialing from out of the home network. Don't dial by number, look it up by name and tell it to get a connection.
What I want is to be able to copy my phone book between my home phone, cell phone and, for editing, my computer.
-- Stephen.
requiring ten billion numbers to access two hundred and ninety million odd people implies that someone really screwed up somewhere...
those of us that are actually *aware* that there is a world outside of the US and Iraq know that the '1' is the country code for north america. Don't know why you have to dial it, though.
in memphis, you now have to dial 11 digits if you are out of the county. i lived in a mississippi suburb when i was a kid and we could always dial memphis numbers directly. not anymore.
As far as I can tell, this move was made to level the playing field between the bells and new start up local carriers. My father has worked in the telcom sector for some time now, and this is how he explained it to me:
When cell phone and pagers got popular, we started running out of numbers, despite our population grouth estimates. But that was okay, because we could put cell phones and pagers on a seperate overlapping area code. Now small start-up phone companies want to provide local service. They can buy blocks in the new overlaping area code. But, here's the catch. If you want service from someone other than Ameritech (now SBC), you are going to have to get a number in this new overlaping area code. So, you're going to need to dial 11 numbers to get your friends in the old area code. It's an added barrier to entry when new customers will have to suffer an extra 4 digit burden. So, the FCC decided that in order to level the playing field, all people in areas with overlaping area codes should dial 11 digits.
If this is indeed the case, I can understand why people are getting upset. We are sacfificing the short term convience of dialing 7 numbers for the hope that in the end better competition will help consumers.
Not fair? As my father says "Life's not fair. Get over it."
...but how does this help with the size of the address space?
No seven-digit number starts with a '1', so every time I dial a number without a '1', there is an implicit '1-xxx-' added to the front of it, where xxx is the area code I am dialing from.
I just don't get it.
"Wise men talk because they have something to say; fools, because they have to say something" - Plato
The problem with using 1 as a toll indicator is that it breaks universal dialing. What if I want an autodialer to always work, no matter where it is plugged in. In enlightened areas of the USA, dialing all 11 digits will always work, whether the call is local or toll. It doesn't matter if the local calling area changes, the area code is split, or the autodialer is moved to a different location, it still works. This is important when phone numbers are programmed into fax machines, laptop computers, burglar alarms, elevators, vending machines, intelligent telephones and many other devices.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
Since a long time...
Though actually we have "10-digit" dialing, just (xxx)xxx-xxxx, the 1 is not necessary.
;)
Most of urban Colorado was served by 303 for the longest time, then we ran out. They added the 720 code, but instead of regionalizing it they overlayed it, so new phone numbers could be 303 or 720, and the area code tells you nothing about the, well, area that number is in.
I'm surprised New York lasted this long. I think there are as many people in each borough as there are in the entire state of Colorado. I'd guess they went with regional area codes for a while, which our RBOC (Qworst) decided they didn't want to do.
Heh, reminds me of a certain Simpsons episode
Why don't we all switch our phone numbers over to hexidecimal? 11 digit dialing -> *poof* -> 9 digit dialing!
But there is another kind of evil that we must fear most... and that is the indifference of good men.
The lack of phone number is NOT primarily due to the growth in the number of cell phones, pagers, fax machines, modems, etc. This is a HUGE misconception. The actual fact is that every one of the hundreds of phone companies, large and small, have gobbled up big blocks of numbers in the hopes of providing local phone service. There are plenty of numbers, they're just not being used.
I have a cell phone from Verizon and do 10 digit dialing to any area code, whether its considered a local call or a long distance call, and from any location as well. If they can do it for cell phones, why not land lines?
We've had 10 digit dialing for a while in Toronto. Why do you need to enter a 1 at the beginning? It's a sign long distance over here. 0 for collect. I thought that was standard. How is dialing a 1 before every number going to increase the number of available phone lines?
That said not having area codes relate to 'area' (having more then one area code in the same house) is a pain. That's one of the things that suck about IP addresses. You can't tell where the computer by looking at it's IP (well not with a lot of research first.) Does IPv6 have this ability?
Montreal will be doing this as well, starting in February 2004. Right now, we already have two area codes - to make a local call from the 514 area code to the 450 area code, you need to dial all 10 digits. Next year, you'll have to dial all 10 no matter what local number you're calling.
We've had 10 digit dialing here in KC for a while now, and this never made sense to me. If the "switch" knows the number that is dialing out, and sees a request for a 7 digit number, why can't the phone company just tack on the first 3, or 4, numbers of the requesting phone? If I'm dailing out from 913-498-2001 and I dial 345-1234, can't the phone system just append the 913 from my number? Heck you could apply that so that you only have to dial 4 numbers for people in the same exchange. This seems like a really simple solution, so I'm probably missing something. Someone please straighten me out.
THIS SPACE FOR RENT
At least in Finland the mobile phone operators each have their own area code, so that the "normal" area codes don't get used up by mobiles. Actually does not make much sense to have NY code for your MOBILE phone now, does it? :)
"There is a terrorist behind every bush"
We have had this system in use for over a year now in Toronto, Ontario. We have 10 digit local dialing, as we have 3 local area codes. The 1 is only necessary for actual long distance.
It is a very frustrating transition to make. You don't realize just how many pre-programmed numbers you use in day to day life until someone asks you to change them.
All the numbers in my mobile, same with my home phone. Then you get to work and have to reprogram your desk phones' speed dial. And don't for get your fax machine.
Trust me this is something you will get used to, but it's a hell of a headache adjusting.
Oh yeah, and if your building entrance uses your phone for entry, you might want to check with your super and make sure he/she changes it. Ours was down for 2 days....
'I don't want more choices. I just want better things.' - Edina Monsoon
In Atlanta, we've had 10-digit dialing for over 8 yeasr now. In fact, I think it's been closer to 10 years that we've had to dial the area code for ALL phone numbers.
Big deal. Where's the news in this story?
Here in Montana, where we have only one area code (and still span a time zone), the phone company just reduced the number of digits we have to dial: calls to Billings (90 miles away) used to require the area code, but now they're a local call.
Look, it's trying to think - Albert Rosenfield
When will the greedy American public come to realize that they are wasting our precious phone number resources? Every single call you make helps evil American corporations funnel money to terrorist groups in Arab countries who supply the energy to power your phone. On top of that cell phones and fax machines are dangerous and can cause serious harm to others in an accident. Instead of using those piggish energy guzzling status symbols, a cheap Radio Shack phone in your home works just as well, without the dangerous depletion and dependence on our precious phone number resource.
I've had this in my area (about an hour away from Philadelphia) for years now. Its nothing new. There was even a simpsons episode about it.
Here in Montana, where we have only one area code (and still span a time zone), the phone company just reduced the number of digits we have to dial: calls to Billings (90 miles away) used to require the area code (10 digits), but now they're a local call (7 digits).
Look, it's trying to think - Albert Rosenfield
In New York the mobile numbers are on a separate area code too. You have 212/646/718 for regular lines, and 917 for mobile devices.
Have you been to Europe lately and seen the state that it's in? Seen the burning trash barrels on every street corner? Seen the packs of rabid mongrels roaming the streets looking for a morsel to eat? Seen the people standing in government bread lines as far as the eye can see?
Yes, you're right; we're not like the "worker's paradise" of Europe, and I hope to God we stay that way.
When phones first appeared, dialing meant talking to an operator who used banana plugs to connect you to the phone of the person you were calling. Then they put electromagnetic switches into place and you could dial yourself. At first this required dialing three digits. But this convenience was very short-lived as phones appeared in more homes and businesses and eventually we spent a number of years dialing five digits. That worked for local calls, but if you wanted to dial the next town, you had to go through the operator again. Then they put the equipment in place and added prefixes. They even gave them names to make them easier to remember. You've all heard of the "KLondike 5" prefix used on old TV and radio shows. The first two letters were for the first two numbers and the 5 was for the third number, which was also the first of the five digits you dialed for local calls mentioned above. (If you look at a phone, you'll see that K and L also stand for 5, so the prefix was 555, a prefix that was not allowed and is still only used for directory assistance, so was a good choice for TV, where no-one wanted to put a real phone number.)
Eventually we had even more phones, so even seven digits wasn't enough, so they created area codes. Now you had to dial ten digits to call the next state. But then more phones were put into place, and they needed ten digits just for the next town, so they added the 1 and you had to dial eleven digits for long distance, and now apparently all the time in NYC.
Now even within more and more towns, they have several "area codes," and there appears no relief in sight. In my local area, we went to ten digits several years ago. When I complained to the local phone company, they claimed that I'd soon be able to take my phone number with me, so the concept of an "area code" wouldn't mean much. Not too bad...if they ever did it. My neighbor moved one mile within the same town but had to change his phone number. I'm moving to a neighboring town and will have to do the same. But I still have to dial ten digits. What a load of crap!
But I think I have a (perhaps radical and too late) solution:
1. Celular phones should have separate area codes. An area code doesn't make sense for mobile phones, so give them their own. Besides, then you could at least keep your cel phone number if you moved (and not be long distance from your new home). When you call the phone, you get a message if it's a long distance call and you can decide then if you want to pay the toll.
2. All pagers must have consolidated phone numbers. There is no reason that each pager needs its own phone number. Most pagers are not used much at all, especially compared to your typical voice number. A phone number plus a 4-digit code would free up tons of phone numbers for regular use.
3. Restore the "area codes" to areas, and get rid of "overlays." Who's the rocket scientist that figured out overlays? There is no real benefit, and the drawbacks are ridiculous. Almost without exception, the only reason we're outgrowing area codes is because of cel phones. The density of ground lines is pretty limited, so
with 1 above, area code issues go away.
4. With area codes restored, allow you to dial just the end of a phone number in your same area code/prefix plus the pound (#) key. I really should have patented this idea and charged the phone company $$$ for it. But the idea is simple.
Just think: For my next door neighbor, I'd only have to dial four digits and the #! A local business, maybe seven digits.
Back to the Good Old Days!
Xesdeeni
miami and the surrounding areas already have to do this. I don't think this is as big of a deal as most of you make it out to be though, since you have to use the area code when dialing with a cell phone anyway. Oh well
I think my principles are reachin' an all time low
It's had it for a couple of years now. The whole Minneapolis area used to be 612, but now there's additionally 763 (north/northwest) and 952 (south/southwest). It doesn't sound that painful, but let me assure you, it's more than a minor pain. Even after two years, I still find numbers written places as the generic 612 and have to think about where they are to determine how to dial it (because the automated "this number is in the XXX area code now" is only temporary).
I always had a problem in the UK when BT said they needed to introduce new dialling codes because of needing more numbers because of increased mobile phone use. The numbers used by mobile (cell) phones in the UK don't resemble fixed line phone numbers at all. None of the area codes over here use 07xxx prefixes, yet I now have to dial 11 digits to contact central London (4 miles down the road) where I previously only had to dial 7. Do the telecoms companies EVER pay for new stationery with the new numbers on it?
Western Europe is turning to ISDN in droves. Since ISDN requires a powered TA installed in your home (contrary to the US version of ISDN), the independence from the power grid is rapidly becoming a moot point anyway.
Better reasons to say that VoIP isn't ready to function as primary lines is that they rely on your ISP, which is usually not as reliable as a POTS line. Additionally, some of the VoIP services do not offer 911/112 connectivity.
I wonder if something like domain name lookups could be geared towards the phone service. Somehow use spoken names, or nicknames, to dial from a stored (stored by some third party for a nominal fee) personal address book that was accessible from any phone just by dialing a certain number and then entering your unique id. After that you'd just speak the name, or nickname, of whom you wish to call, and then the computers do the messy work with the long numbers (like DNS servers do for internet addresses). Most phone companies are using simple speech recognition for the customer service lines now anyway, so it wouldn't be such a stretch to implement a system like this.
We've had this in Illinois (at least in Cook County) for over a year too. If I want to call my neighbor across the hall I have to dial 11 digits. I also remember talking my mother through changing her dial up networking to dial 11 digits so she could get on the Internet.
Has been doing this for years now. It feels odd even to dial a phone w/o the area code tucked onto the front. You'll get used to it. You probably won't have to use the "1" in front so it's not so bad :-)
Have a Happy.
When Denver got an overlay area code (and 10-digit dialing, which I actually like) the PUC did something very smart that eliminates many of the problems others are reporting.
They made all calls within this area code local.
Most of the area code was already local. But not quite all. The border was slightly adjusted, the rate was raised by pennies, and now every call within the area code is toll-free.
I'm surprised this approach hasn't spread. It greatly simplies your life since all you need to remember are which area codes are "local" and which are not, and there's no worry about inadvertently triggering a toll charge. (Or chaos, for those of us with no prefered LD carrier because Costco phone cards are cheaper for our needs.) It may not be appropriate in all area codes, but certainly should be used in any area requiring 10-digit dialing.
For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong. -- H L Mencken
Nah, as long as the US insists on using arabic digits (0-9), it's still behind. Everyone knows that real countries use Roman numerals.
Plus... using Roman numerals cuts down on the need for operators, much less people dialing "0."
Sonnet 18
William Trollspeare
Shall I compare thee to a Troll?
Thou art more vile and more obstinate:
Rough words not the slightest bit droll,
And your IP's lease hath all too long a date:
Sometime too hot may mine own posts be,
And often is mine post modded "flamebait";
And every metamod from "fair" sometime declines,
By chance or unfair metamoderation;
But thy eternal Trollness shall not fade
Nor gain karma points for being "Interesting";
Nor shall you be "Funny" or "Insightful",
When eternally you bait the Flame
In a most Offtopic way for your own reasons,
So long as you do thus, you remain a Troll
Massive apologies to W.S. Oh, and mark the parent "Offtopic" please.
GF.
Lots of petrified grits
Because the US is the center of the universe, don't ya know?
In the past, the FCC has guarded the '1' since
everyone knows that marks long-distance. It seems
to me that having your local calls also require
a '1' means that you can't tell when a number
is long distance or local.
Given the amount of incorrect billing (in my mind
I would call it fraud) that I have seen on my
telephone bills in the last 5 years, the last
thing I would want to see is a blurring of the
local/long distance distinction.
It's bad enough that I can call a number in
another state hundreds of miles away,
and have it billed by my local
Bell for 300% more than my state-to-state
carrier. (And yes, I have changed my local
carrier; but in-state, even between states, is
still more expensive than state-to-state).
Now, it won't even be clear when a number is
local.
If we are going with the extended dialing, it should be 10-digit dialing unless it is a toll. If you always have to dial 1 then you have no way of knowing if it is a toll call or not.
In any case, we should certainly re-standardize. One of the most elegant aspects of the U.S./Canadian system for so many years is that a local number was 7 digits, the area code was 3, and you only had to dial 1+area code if it was going to cost you. Now every area has its own approach as to whether you dial 7, 10, or 11 digits and you pretty much have to ask which it is when you arrive. Our system is now as non-standard and non-consistent as the rest of the world that uses variable length city codes and local phone numbers.
Personally, I'd be for creating new area codes. If necessary make the area codes 4 digits rather than 3 since I believe we'll soon run out of area codes. But why in the world do I have to dial 10 or 11 digits to identify the house across the street? It's silly.
German numbers have, theoretically, no length limits. Dialing any number not starting with a '0' is local. If it starts with a '0', it's actually (0)-areacode-localpart. Note that some other nearby area codes might be priced with, e.g., local tariffs - check the local phone book for info. Numbers starting with '00' are actually '00'-countrycode-number. As for the length of the numbers, numbers can be practically any length, as long as you have either unique prefixes, or defined fixed-length subblocks. For bigger companies or the like, you order a block of numbers. My student dorm, for instance, has 8695{1-7}xyz, using ISDN point-to-point.
As a consequence, some numbers might be short (my home phone number is area code + four digits, small town), or much longer (some Berlin numbers have eight _local_ digits), but it depends on the setup of the local switching center (in my home town, local numbers prefixed by 9 are actually 6-digit, not 4-digit).
So? Not each number is the same length, you might call that chaotic. But at least it scales to some extent, and if you run out of numbers, you might only have to convert some number blocks to new, longer numbers. And, if you do not start your number with a '0', you _definitely_ know it's local, and priced accordingly.
This is not Germany specific. But it just makes sense, don't you think?
This just in: New York has officially become the center of the universe. When asked to comment about this, several New Yorkers mugged and beat this reporter to death.
The number of numbers has nothing to do with superiority, it just tells you the maximum number of unique telephone numbers. ;-)
At the start of the 80's, London (UK) had 7-digit numbers served by a single "city" code of 01, so a typical inner city London number would be of the format 01 123 4567. This number would work from anywhere in the country.
By the end of the 80's, an increase in the volume of dedicated lines and faxes meant that the city was running out of numbers.
First, London was split into two regions, inner and outer. Inner was given the prefix 071 and outer 081. This was changed about three years later to 0171 and 0181 before changing again a few years later to 0207 and 0208. So if you were an inner-city business, your number changed from 01 123 4567 to 071 123 4567 to 0171 123 4567 and finally to 020 7123 4567 in the space of about 12 years.
All thanks to the wonderful people at OFTEL, the UK Telecommunications regulator.
Perhaps the most useful number change in the UK happened a few years ago when all mobile numbers were changed to begin with 07. That way, a mobile number is always immediately identifiable.
About a decade ago in Minnesota, the 612 area code stretched from Minneapolis out to where I lived ... Hickville. If you were making a call down the street ... 7 digits. If you were making a call in the Cities, 11 digits. But say you always had to do 11-digit dialing. You dial the wrong number, there's a reasonable chance you'll get charged for lond distance, even though you were calling down the street.
The reason you have to dial 1 to call long-distance is so you won't end up accidentaly calling long-distance if you didn't want to. It's completely arbitrary to make people dial one for local calls. All they need to do is dial 10-digits, I mean dammit! So many people are idiots.
incripshin
Why does the US insist on having telephone numbers in a certain format?
In Germany, telephone numbers are just handed out as needed, with small towns typically having shorter numbers that, say, Berlin.
This way, we simply cannot run out of numbers.
On the whole, the setup seems much more logical: dial a number (can be any length) to call within your city, dial a 0 + city code + telnumber for another city, and 00 + country code + city code + telnumber for international.
Ciao,
Klaus
Free PC version of ChipWits at http://www.breueronline.de/klaus/chipwits/
In the DC area, for the past several years.
Jack Valenti and the MPAA are to technology as the Boston strangler is to the woman home alone
Old
[2-9][0,1][1-9] => 8 * 2 * 9 = 144 area codes
[2-9][2-9][0-9] => 8 * 8 * 10 = 640 exchanges
144 * 640 * 10000 = 921,600,000 total numbers
10 digit
[2-9][0-9][0-9] => 8 * 10 * 10 = 800 area codes
[0-9][0-9][0-9] => 10 * 10 * 10 = 1000 exchanges
800 * 1000 * 10000 = 8,000,000,000 total numbers
7,078,400,000 more than old way
11 digit
[0-9][0-9][0-9] => 10 * 10 * 10 = 1000 area codes
[0-9][0-9][0-9] => 10 * 10 * 10 = 1000 exchanges
1000 * 1000 * 10000 = 10,000,000,000 total numbers
2,921,600,000 more than 10 digit
9,078,400,000 more than old way
Key to financial independence: Spend less than you earn. Save and invest the difference. Do it for a long time.
Interesting perspective on the history of the 555 prefix. But those weren't banana plugs they used in the old days. Banana plugs only have one contact. The connectors with a ring and a tip contact were actually called "phone plugs" and are still in use today (check a fireman's phone handset).
Banana plugs have a curved springy side and if you use your imagination they look a little like a banana.
We have had 10 digit dialing here in Atlanta since before I moved here 2+ years ago. Nice thing about it is that if you are making a real long distance call, then you dial the 1-xxx-xxx-xxxx. Otherwise, you just dial area code + 7 digits. May not be really different, but it does seem nicer to me. I know what is long distance and what isn't automatically. Of course, we only have 3 area codes presently.
I'll never be as good as I want to be. I can only be as good as I am.
The problem is that dialing rules are set by a number of bodies, the FCC, the North America Numbering Plan administrator, regional telephone companies, state public utility commissions and state legislatures. That is why there are no consistent rules across the country.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
That's Ludacris, errr nevermind.
and finally to 020 7123 4567
The odd thing is that when calling from the US, dialing the initial '0' makes it Not Work. If I wanted to call your example number from the US, I would dial 011 44 207 123 4567.
We've had 10 digit dialing in Houston for years. Just like Houston, the transition will be smooth, even though people are worried about grandma dialing the wrong area code blah blah blah. They'll be fine.
What, me Tweet?
You mean businesses with good PBX's and decent providers. In my last life I admin'd a Fujitsu 9600 with 5 T1's, and a PRI. The PRI was SBC local, and 2 T1's did LD out with WorldCom. Those were the only stable providers.. Both local and LD would send 'Caller ID', but I only set it up to send the main number.
Where CallerID didn't work, is when we tried to use USXChange for a local provider. They couldn't seem to get CallerID to work right. That was a full T1, and it worked sporadically.
Ahh I loved my Fujitsu.. don't even get me started on these cheapo garbage Norstars.
"I can't give you a brain, so I'll give you a diploma" - The Great Oz (blatently stolen sig)
Which is that number would correctly be written as +44 (0) 20 7123 4567.
11 digit dialing coming to the city of New York for all phone calls, including inner city calls.
Is you trying to say dat the peeps from the hood can't deal with 11 digits? Don't even think about starting those 9-11 jokes again. You know the one:
"Why don't people from the inner city call 911?"
A: Beacuse they can't find the 11 (eleven) button on the telephone
Yeah your're a really funny guy! Why don't you just come down to the block in the Bronx and show us how funny you are in person?
Next time use,"intra-city" instead of "inner-city"!!!!!
There are certain distinct disadvantages to having variable length phone numbers. Since you are not pressing an "enter key" on your telephone when you are done dialling the number (mobile phones are an exception here), the exchange has to guess when you are done keying in digits. In the American situation, this is easy to do, as the exchange can just count the digits. In a variable length situation, the total length of the number depends on the digits already dialed.
Incidentally, the variable system wastes more numbers, as you need the first digits to indicate what kind of a phone number it is going to be.
Now that I am on my soapbox, I think all phone numbers worldwide should start with a "+" and should be of fixed length, just for the sake of simplicity.
This has been going on in New Jersey for the last year.
I'm sure that refitting phones would suck, but maybe we should consider more than just the near future and start using a base system higher than ten. 10^10 gives 10,000,000,000 unique numbers whereas 16^10 gives 1,099,510,000,000. Each person on earth can have 183 phone numbers if they want.
I know that it would be quite a task to change around the whole system. However, as the population increases and third world nations emerge into a more tech endowed world the demand for phone numbers will increase rapidly. I'd much rather remember a girl's ten letters and digits than a twenty character long string of numbers.
Welcome to the land of the free...pay toll ahead...no photography...please open your bag...
It would just prove that US citizens can remember more information than the rest of us thought...
That is why people are complaining about having a phone number in which they can't write a digit on each digit.
An Eye for an Eye will make the whole world blind - Gandhi
Here in Toronto we've had to use the full area code for a couple years now (416/647). Of course Bell Canada has things set up so that you normally dial 10 digits, if it's long distance you'll be told so, and you have to dial with the leading 1. However, I disabled long distance on my phone altogether (solves problems with housemates) and use a third-party long distance company. Much cheaper than Bell, and no "who-owns-this-call" detective work when I get the phone bill.
-Malloc
___________________ I want to be free()!
Here in Brazil we also ran out of numbers. Old 7-digit telephone numbers got an extra digit at the beginning (230-5932 became 3230-5932).
For long distance calls, we used to dial 0 followed by the two or three long distance city prefix.
If a call is made to my city, Sao Paulo, you'd dial 011-3230-5932.
And then they privatised the telcos. And you have a choice of long distance carriers,you select when dialing. The telcos have a two digit number that goes between the zero and the two digit city number. Suppose you decide to use Telefonica's services for your long distance (code 15):
0-15-11-3230-5932
Phew. 13-digit dialing is just f**** up.
International calls require the obligatory prefix 00 folowed by the carrier code, the country code, city code and telephone number. If we try to call NYC using Embratel international services (21), you'll end up with:
00-21-1-212-555-5555
That's 15 digits. And you did not use a calling card.
Forget the call, just send me an email.
So I could call from my home in 410 to some 301 exchanges and it would be a local call. I can call from 301 and reach *some* 410 numbers locally. Some 703 (VA) numbers are local too. But from 410, some 410 numbers need 1+410 and may or may not be LD. Physical distance seems to be the best indicator of LD or not. I.E., 15-minute drive from 410 to 301, local. 45-minute drive from 410 to 410, long distance.
The 443 and 204 codes were recently overlaid on 410 and 301, respectively. I can dial adjacent 443 from 410 without the 1+.
So the basic rule seems to be that if there is no 1+area code, there is no long distance charge. But everyone I call is in my cellphone memory, and my dialing plan has free long distance.
It seems really ridiculous to require 11 digit dialing in your own area code. Perhaps if we didn't USE area codes but had an entirely random string numbers 11 digit dialing as a requirement is obviously a necessity.
First of all, it's 10 digit dialing. You don't ned to dial the 1 unless it's long distance, and you already had to dial 11 digits for those calls. Second of all, they need to require 10 digit dialing within your own area code simply to reduce the number of incorrectly dialed calls. Think about it, how do you know what area code the phone you're diaing out from is. If you've made a habit of dialing only seven digits from your home phone and then you go somewhere else and try to call somebody with your home area code, you may call the wrong person. Now imagine this situation in a city of 11 million people. I don't know about you, but I don't want my phone ringing incorrectly that often.
The only thing different between this and what Orlando did years ago is that in Orlando, you don't have to dial the 1 first.
I know, kinda offtopic but oh ewll....
Did you ever want to know if your phone number spelled out any words? I found this program on freshmeat one day...
http://phraze.sourceforge.net/
A guy at work had the number 5-FAG-GET which was too damn funny since he was a total homophobe.
later,
ajay
I've always found it strange that people complain about remembering "all those digits". 90% of the phone numbers I memorize break down into just four numbers: the three-digit area code, the three-digit prefix (both of which are often reused) and two two-digit numbers (i.e. forty-five and sixty-seven instead of four-five-six-seven). Add a number one at the beginning and that's only five numbers to memorize.
It's easier than it sounds. New Yorkers will have to memorize only, what, three or four area codes? Which they've probably memorized already. Most three-digit prefixes are reused often, and those that aren't can be broken into a one-digit and two-digit number. Two-digit numbers are easy to remember if you think of them as years ('45 = 1945) and associate them with some event in that year, like a birthday or some larger historical occurrence.
Of course, I know that it's sooooooo painful to type those extra four digits every time you want to call someone. Geez louise, did people whine this much when cable networks began using three-digit channel numbers?
Here in Seattle it's even more messed up. Used to be 206 area code everywhere. Then came 425 for the suburbs, and 206 for the city. Now within 425 sometimes you get a local 7-digit call, sometimes you have to dial 1-425 first. It would have been simpler if everything was 1-425. And on top of that, to dial Seattle it's 206, not 1-206. The error rate on dialing here must be huge.
My parents have had to do 11 digit calling locally for the last three years or so (maybe four). The reason for this was because of the creation of new local area codes.
Well last year the local paper checked up on one of these new area codes and found exactly one phone number... and it was disconnected.
The strange thing is that the area isn't that built up and isn't expanding as fast as some other towns. Hell, I think it might be an enigma to SBC as well.
What is music when you despise all sound?
"How big of a monkey?"
Woo Simpsons!
I agree that it's not a big problem, but it does make numbers harder to remember. Seven digits is easily within the compass of people's short-term memories, but add two other pieces of information that you have keep in mind, and nine pieces is a bit of a stretch -- almost out of the 7 +/- 2 range that most people's short-term memory works in.
And realistically, you still have to devote some processing time to dialing all three area code digits, which gives them a chance to displace the phone number in your memory.
Three years ago when i worked in NYC I had a 917 business number on a landline, whenever I'd tell peopel it they'd always ask me if it was a cellphone.
Why not just change to 4 digit area codes?
This would still allow you to keep the 11 Digit
Number.
Doing this would be a 1 time deal, so you wouldn't
have to deal with Overlay's and s*hit anymore.
The problem with the US phone system is that it's
been "Patched" to deatch over the last 10 years.
Just switch to a 4 digit area code, reprogram the
Telcow switches "CORRECTLY" and be done with it.
When patching the switches they can also eliminate this 10k Number block allotment s*hit.
US needs to get with the program and and Update/
modernize it's network. Something that is
esperatly needed.
As for all you who complain that 11 Digit "Or
More" dialing is a pain in the a**, also need
to get with the program. Sometimes I think
the system is the way it is is because Americans
are to stupid to remember longer numbers.
We've been using 10 digits phone numbers for a couple of years now. We don't need to dial de 1 but the area code is mandatory. And from the Montreal island to either north or south shore the area code changes but no LD fee (yet) and no 1-.
We were told by our switch vendor (its a Nortel Meridian 61C) that we couldn't do caller id outbound due to the fact that we had T1s. I always presumed that the T1s didn't support that kind of signaling, but it could be the combination of Qwest T1s and our switch rev (which is kind of getting ancient) wouldn't send that data out.
The mantra was always that if we wanted good caller id we needed PRI, but its a huge forklift upgrade involving several software releases and CPU upgrades that nobody is interested in spending money on ("the phone works fine"). We have so few display phones anyway that inbound caller id would be kind of a waste of money, unless someone gave us a few hundred displays or phones with displays.
My PHB keeps asking me why we want to spend $30k to upgrade the phone system instead of replacing it, and I keep telling him its cheaper than the $400k it will take to replace it.
Why not just go to a complete alphanumeric system if you want less digits, and use some special symbols as well why not? That would give more combinations much faster.
;)
Im sure a great industry of personalised phone numbers would spring up as well, after all who wouldnt want to have a phone number like W*NKER, for example
Then, when you need more numbers, go ahead and split the area code, but do it several ways (2212, 3212, etc.) -- and do the split all at once, so you're not dealing with a new set every year. Also, it would keep "212" as a distinct geographical area.
Furthermore, mobiles get their own area codes (say, 9212, 8212, however many are required for growth) -- then you can move to allowing caller-pays for mobile phones...
Madness takes its toll. Exact change please.
This just shows how New York-centric the Times is. Dallas has required 10 digit dialing for over 4 years.
Welcome to the 90's.
Here in Oregon we've had 10 digit dialing for about a year in the Portland/Metro Area. I'm suprised that it took New York City this long to get to it.
Zagreus sits inside your head, Zagreus lives among the dead, Zagreus sees you in your bed and eats you in your sleep.
Oh great. Soon I'll have to dial an IPv6 number just to pay for phone sex...
/^[A-Z0-9._%+-]+@[A-Z0-9.-]+\.[A-Z]{2,4}$/i
Actually 917 overlaps all 5 boroughs:
See map
And when I lived there this summer, more and more people were abandoning their landlines completely and just using their cell phones w/the built-in caller ID. Really doesn't matter how long the number is after you've typed it correctly once. You just call the person once and they save it in their contact lists. Plus when you're only there for 3 months, who wants to pay a $55 line activation fee + $30-something a month on top of the cell phone bill you're already paying?
In Toronto, they've also had this for a couple of years, now that 416 AC overlaps with 905 and 647, and 905 overlaps with 289. I don't know why it's such a big deal to dial 10 digits instead of 7 anyway. It's not like it takes longer or anything, and after awhile you just get used to asking people for their AC. In fact, when I moved from Toronto back to London, which just has conventional 7-digit dialling, it felt funny not to have to dial 519 in front of all my calls.
Don't tell me that New Yorkers are whinier than Torontonians! I may be crushed!
I'm not a geek, I'm just a clever script.
So does this mean that '0' is now a legal first digit in an area code or exchange? I haven't seen any 0xx area codes or exchanges yet--can you point me to any that are in use? (I don't doubt you--I'm just curious to see one of these).
I just heard my first toll-free 855 the other day. Boy, those sure are going fast. Seems like 877 and 866 were just introduced.
Karma: Excellent Birds (mostly as a result of listening to Laurie Anderson)
When is the next NAMBLA group outing?
Because dialing more digits isn't a step forward, its a step backward.
Or perhaps, like most of your fellow countrymen, you think more complexity is a good thing.
Why do you think there's been no sigificant commercial software or hardware coming out of your country since the late 50's?
1-0xx-xxx-xxxx will still not be likely, as it would conflict with the 1010xxx carrier codes.
But you are on to something. Dialing the 1 first would make 1xx area codes available. Some offices must be using 0xx/1xx exchanges for routing, hence the need for the 1- prefix to signal an area code follows, not an exchange.
It appears Ockham lost his razor and grew a beard.
They tried this in L.A. like 2 or 3 years ago. I guess it didn't go over well and they changed it back to not having to dial area code for your local area code. I don't know exactly what caused them to switch back though?
You're one of those people who keeps the phone plastered to his ear and here's the conversaton:
You: No, not doing anything how about you?
You: oh, uh huh
You: No, I'm just walking along here
You: No, not doing anyting
You: Yes, I'm just walking along
You: No, nothing new just walking along
You: I'm on the way home
You: No, nothing new. What's new with you
You: No, nothing new, do you want to go to the movies
You: Well, maybe this weekend, no, nothing new with me either
You: No, nothing new.
You: Im' getting a new phone tomorrow
You: No, other than that, nothing new
You: Hello hello? You're breaking up...hello? hello?
I live in the 510 area code, near San Francisco, where Pacific Bell tried to force 11 digit dialing on us a while back. Their reasoning went something like this:
1. We need more phone numbers.
2. We'll add a new "overlay" area code, meaning that it covers the same geographical area as the existing area code.
3. People won't remember to dial the new 1+areacode, because they're used to dialing only the last 7 digits when calling within their own geographical area.
4. We should therefore force customers to dial 1+areacode with every call, even when it's technically unnecessary, to train them into using the extra digits.
This, of course, was offensive to those of us in the area who consider ourselves less stupid than Pac Bell assumes. Many of us are perfectly capable of dialing the extra digits when necessary, even for local numbers, and were annoyed at the prospect of having arbitrary inconvenience forced onto us. As I remember it, enough of us complained that Pac Bell got the message, and changed their policy.
Has no one considered changing the phone system to accept alphanumeric characters. Seven digits equals 10^7 possible phone numbers. Seven alphanums equals 36^7 or 78364164096 possible phone numbers. That doesn't even take into account the fact that letters can be related to the area. NYC-xxxx is a lot easier to remember.
-chili snow
all my life i've associated the 212 area code with new york.
Livery services (cab/limo/etc.) located in Queens and Brooklyn want to look like they're based in Manhattan and so purchase a (212) number, which forwards the call to their proper number. AFAIK, the assumption that the service is from Manhattan helps considerably with business. So, (212) is not just for phones in NY.
However - to get back on topic - I'd say that adding digits and area codes is less confusing than using prefix letters. "Yes operator. Please connect me to PEnnsylvania 6-5000." Some history on phone dialing here.
For those not in-the-know, the parent means New York as in the "County of" (Manhattan Island), not the "City of" or "State of".
This is not my sig.
If we could have a "postal number", then we would not have to notify a jillion people if we move, and the post office would not have to play forwarding leap-frog. They simply have a look-up table to translate the postal number into a physical address.
It is a lesson from the database world: Don't embed business attributions (such as location) in unique identifiers.
Table-ized A.I.
for about a year now I think.
In NJ you need to 11 digit dial all the time. Even, for example, from one 908 area code line to another....
Opinionated Law Student Strikes Again!
Wow. People have to enter the area code now. Big deal.
We've been doing this for gawd knows how long with cell phones. I have my home phone service through Vonage, and I have to type in the full 11 digit number anyway.
Must be a slow news day. We'll know it's a slow news day when we see this article show up again later.
I have to enter 33 digits to do
longdistance.
Dont feel bad for NYC because they have to dial more digits. We in western pa, have been doing it for almost a year now. Granted, we have a higher intelligence in Western Pa, so we caught on fast ;)
I'd say your switch probably doesn't send out that info. I'm not a fan of the Meridian system. Setting up a phone is a huge drag, and having multiple numbers ring at one station royally sucks. (In the fujitsu, ADD MLDT [Multi-Line Digital Telephone] creates a phone - there's only one port to worry about. MOD MLPFB [Multi-Line Programmable Feature Buttons] lets you modify all the buttons - and I can just add another extension to another button. No biggie). Though the Meridian does that that 'phone remembers it's #' feature. I don't use it, I just don't trust it enough ;)
The mantra was always that if we wanted good caller id we needed PRI, but its a huge forklift upgrade involving several software releases and CPU upgrades that nobody is interested in spending money on ("the phone works fine"). We have so few display phones anyway that inbound caller id would be kind of a waste of money, unless someone gave us a few hundred displays or phones with displays.
Oh... I thought you meant outbound CID. Hmm I really don't see where that would make a difference - but I'm not a telco ;)
My PHB keeps asking me why we want to spend $30k to upgrade the phone system instead of replacing it, and I keep telling him its cheaper than the $400k it will take to replace it.
If it were me, I'd drop the Meridian and get a Fujistu. I love that thing. It'll handle up to 9600 extensions, and it's expandible all across the board. Then again, I KNOW the fujitsu, I've added T1's, Digital and Analog phone cards, and did some funky T1 PBX to PBX connection with it (for a remote site), and I've only been frustrated by the damn little 2 line interface for the Meridian.
If you have a small office and don't make many changes, like where I am now, it's fine. But I detest creating new phones for users in the beast..
"I can't give you a brain, so I'll give you a diploma" - The Great Oz (blatently stolen sig)
Back in 1995, I worked for a long distance reseller. I was the system admin, but also had to maintain the PBX system. Verizon's (Bell Atlantic back then) decision to add new area codes was disasterous. Executone PBX's came from the factory knowing ("hard coded") that an area code was a three digit number with either a 1 or a 0 in the middle (ie: 301, 410, 202....). The two new Maryland area codes were 443 and 240. Executone forgot to tell us about this little "problem" until I called them after working on the PBX for 14 hours, trying to figure out why the he** we couldn't call the new area codes.
I have a sinking feeling that they (the PBX industry) haven't learned a whole lot from that mess.
--Insert catchy
Poor New Yorkers...we've had to do pretty much that for the past couple of years here in Southeast PA. 610-xxx-xxxx just to call your neighbor...oh yeah not to mention I have one phone with one area code and another phone with a totally different one...
Not much news here if you ask me...but then again I am an anonymous coward...
I can understand the benefit of opening 0xx and 1xx area codes and exchanges, however it doesn't seem to be any advantage unless *all* telephone switches (CLEC's, ILEC's, PBX's, consumer equipment/software, etc.) were reprogrammed to recognize it as a valid number (so that they could route calls to NY), and that means that *all* phone switches would need to support it locally as well. That would prbably force us to move to 11 digit dialing nation-wide.
--guru
The last time I was in Japan they had 8 digit phone numbers. In China the area code is 4 digits and the number 8 digits (XXXX XXXX-XXXX). It's not much of a change compared with the US system, but (theoretically) it's 1000% more numbers.
~A'Ëq'i4d)^'$ÊSÈòB
Not yet, but I believe that's the plan.
---- It puts the lotion on its skin or else it gets the hose again. It does this whenever it's told.
Actually it would just have to NOT be 1-010-xxx-xxxx
:-)
So, it only cuts out 10,000,000 phone numbers
T
---- It puts the lotion on its skin or else it gets the hose again. It does this whenever it's told.
Denver has had that for years.
-- Ken Kinder ken@_nospam_kenkinder.com http://kenkinder.com/
By requiring a 1 as the first digit, they can have area codes starting with 0 and 1.
"I'm not impatient. I just hate waiting." - My Dad
I'm at Qwest right now and number sharing has been around for a few months.
O~ Him that studies revenge keeps his own wounds green. -- Francis Bacon
Actually no. Just like some places have 10 digits now, not everywhere would need to use 11 digits.
If NYC, for instance adds the "123" area code and requires everyone to use 11 digits, that's fine.
Of course, when the rest of the country calls there they _already_ have to dial 11 digits to get there. So, it's just a minor modification (if any) to the switch. Actually, most of these moves aren't even made until most modern switches can handle it. Even the really ancient ones can be changed to do it.
T
---- It puts the lotion on its skin or else it gets the hose again. It does this whenever it's told.
Setting up a phone is a huge drag, and having multiple numbers ring at one station royally sucks.
It's not that bad. We have model TNs that we just copy to make new phones. Takes longer to punch the TNs to the destination that it does in the switch. Adding additional lines to an existing TN is trivial, KEY XX SC{R|N} 1234.
What drives me nuts about it isn't the complexity, its that you define a phone more so than a *number*. I'd like a number to have a set of HUNT and FDN and other behaviors that are unique to the number regardless of the TN they appear on. Right now the MARP TN controls that behavior, which is a huge nuisance if you have a number that needs to appear on a phone with other numbers but needs unique HUNT/FDN behavior. You basically need to build a different TN, which means you need to either place an additional phone or find a place for all those "extra" phones.
I'm sure the next leap if we make one will be IP based, but I figure that standard needs another 5 years (in this economy, 3 in a good one) to stabilize and have good vendor interoperability.
To avoid fixing the problem once and for all (new, longer numbers and a more rational distribution of them), which would inconvinence everyone ONCE, it seems that they'd rather constantly divide and redivide area codes and tack on bizarre variations (dial 1, don't dial 1, smash the phone against your head, do the hokey pokey, and shake it all about), inconvinencing many, many people several times over.
For example, probably 15 years ago, all of Arizona was 602. Then everywhere outside of the Phoenix area became 520. Then they changed everyone outside the Tucson area (928?). That means at least two sets of business cards rendered obsolete and two reprogramming of the switches.
How about a "routing-based" numbering system. Just keep enterring numbers until you've given the complete routing to a phone, rather than another switchbox... I could see it working like follows:
"If I'm calling out of town, I dial 562 to get to the main trunk, then the number for the city, the number for the street, the number for the block, the number for the building, then finally the number for the person I'm calling."
Dialing local calls could probably be shorter (one figure to get to the local box, then route it to your neighbour with three or four more), long-distance wouldn't be much more difficult than the current system (particularly if you're already dialing 10-10-foo), and it's infinitely extensible.
It's just like a fascist dictatorship, without the punctual rail service!
Northeast Ohio (Youngstown, Canton, Akron, maybe Cleveland, I'm not sure) has had to punch all the buttons for years.
Hmm, I don't think that's what I mean. If I want extension 5000 to ring at 3 stations, and those three stations already have extensionos, I waste one port, AND it's a paind to setup (I just gave up, and had the vendor do it - and it took him an hour to do it) I don't understand that. On my favorite Fujitsu, on the console, I just type 'ADD MLPFB', up comes a screen where I can insert an extension in a box that represents a button on the phone. It shouldn't take an hour to do that..
What drives me nuts about it isn't the complexity, its that you define a phone more so than a *number*. I'd like a number to have a set of HUNT and FDN and other behaviors that are unique to the number regardless of the TN they appear on. Right now the MARP TN controls that behavior, which is a huge nuisance if you have a number that needs to appear on a phone with other numbers but needs unique HUNT/FDN behavior. You basically need to build a different TN, which means you need to either place an additional phone or find a place for all those "extra" phones.
Yep, THAT's what I'm talking about. ARS and stuff should be done based on the number itself... I still don't understand why they assign a number to a location, which is assigned to a port.. or whatever.. I know there's an extra step there that shouldn't be. That's just dumb. If I want multiple #'s to exist in the Fujitsu I just say it exists. I can't remember, something like ADD NULL or something. I then would have a fully usable 'number', but no physical port assigned to it.
I'm sure the next leap if we make one will be IP based, but I figure that standard needs another 5 years (in this economy, 3 in a good one) to stabilize and have good vendor interoperability.
I have a customer who just got an NEC (IIRC), he dumped an older model Meridian for it.. We'll see how that thing works out.
"I can't give you a brain, so I'll give you a diploma" - The Great Oz (blatently stolen sig)
I live in Monmouth County, NJ and we've had 11 number for about a year and a half now. I'm suprised that NYC is just getting it now. The only thing is here in Jersey we now actually have people that say "Joisy." It should be noted though, that they all moved here from the city and we've had a population boom within the last few years. No one really talks like that unless they're from NYC, Bayonne or Jersey City.
It's been that way in Northern Virginia for about 2 years now.
Sig.i>
Get a new cell phone, and use voice recognition. I don't know any of my friend's numbers anymore, I just know how to say their names.
Sig.i>
Well I seem to remember the whole internet community coming together when we seemed to be running out of IP addresses, and a solution was created. Why is it that we are so set on phones each having their own "address"..
The whole southeastern PA area has at least 3 area codes, and has been doing 10 digit dialing for a few years now.
Whether you get a London number beginning 0207 or 0208 is now more or less random. It is no longer geographically divided as 071/0171 and 081/0181 were. London no longer runs on exchange-prefix based routing, it runs on a giant database of all the numbers, mirrored at each exchange.
A friend of mine in Catford has two phone lines in her house, where the number on the BT line is 0208 and the number on the cable line is 0207.
I believe BT can assign businesses their own choice of 0207 or 0208, for prestige purposes (businesses in Hackney proudly display 0208 signage to show they're proudly "Inner London"), but I'm not sure about that.
Does my bum look big in this?
Vancouver British Columbia: within 7 years we've had a second area code (one for Vancouver and it's suburbs (604)and one for the rest of the province (250)), 10 digit dialing (don't have to enter the 1) and just implemented a third area code for Vancouver & the suburbs (604 & 778).
When thr first 2 came into play, there was a recording that would play if you forgot to put the area code while dialing. The tone of the recording was very close to a parent displining a child for a repeated mistake! I believe it was changed after a local radio station (famed for doing musical parodies) got into the act!
(The song might still be around. For those interested check out the Rock101 (CFMI) website)
The GEEK shall inherit the earth...
Pittsburgh is already like this. Its been like this for a little while i think. I just moved here about a year ago and it was definately hard to get used to. "You mean I have to dial the area code to call you even though your two streets over" Yeah it definately sucks.
Yes, if I'd realised in the 1960s that there was going to be more than one phone company, and the population of London was going to hit 10 million, not to mention new fangled gadgets like pagers and mobile phones were going to be invented and become incredibly popular, then I would have introduced the unified numbering scheme earlier.
You forget that many dialing codes formed out of growing from 999 numbers in the area to 9999, to 99999, and each time the existing numbers got a prefix digit. Perhaps we should start dialing 20 digit numbers NOW to avoid future numbering changes? I could start a new business purely on replacing worn-out "0" keys on people's phones.
Does my bum look big in this?
xxx xxx-xxxx for local calls. 1 xxx xxx-xxxx for local or long distance calls.
Hmm, I don't think that's what I mean. If I want extension 5000 to ring at 3 stations, and those three stations already have extensionos, I waste one port, AND it's a paind to setup (I just gave up, and had the vendor do it - and it took him an hour to do it) I don't understand that.
Not how our system (with 2000 series phones) works at all. A "TN" (which is essentially a phone) is defined. All of our 2008 phones have 8 buttons, 5 of which can have numbers assigned to them. Adding an additional extension to those is a single line edit of the TN:
key 02 scr 1234 -- makes ringing button
key 02 scn 1234 -- makes silent but blinking button
That's all there is to it. You can get around some of the phone-centered (as opposed to extension-centered) behavior by building ACDs, but it'd be better if most behavior was LINE centric not phone centric (since people call lines, not phones). Oh well, I'm sure if it were this way I'd bitch about how I have to define 4 lines to get a phone to act a certain way.
Ho yes what for an interressing news. and in china:12, LA:14 Berlin:10 France: 9+1.
go be fucked with your un-interetsing news.
Actually, I lied. It's actually much simpler than before. A few years ago, there was some magic set of rules that required you to sometimes dial an area code, except you could never figure out what it was. If you dialed the area code when you weren't supposed to, a recorded voice would chastise you. If you didn't dial the area code when you needed to, the same voice would so. The only way to find out was to dial every single stinking phone nuumber twice, every time.
One might think that the rule is something like if your number is in the same area code, you don't need to dial it. Of course, that's not the case. I tried to look it up in the phone book but failed. It has something to do about which is a "local exchange", in which "local exchange" is defined by the cross product of all the prefixes in the area code graphed out onto a 2D grid and then sprayed with monkey feces. (Whether a human or monkey sprayed the feces is left to an exercise for the reader.)
But I digress. Even worse, the message would come on and say: "you dialed the area code but you shouldn't. Please hang up and do it again, stupid" (paraphrase). WHAT? You mean the system can detect that I made some trivial mistake, and then refuses to correct it for me? How hard would it be for the computer to truncate those digits and just put the damn call through?
Saldy, there used to be a day when phone numbers fit in your short-term memory. That day is long gone. Too bad the phone companies can't figure out how to make proper "relative" phone numbers like a hierarchical file system. People usually know what phone number they are dialing from. It must be possible to build a system that lets the user always: 1) dial relatively to their own number, and 2) let them explicitly qualify it if they're unsure (rather than posting an obtuse "you messed up!" error message). The user would only need to know one rule then: "any digits that match yours, you can drop". How hard would that be? I'd be glad to toss out fixed-length phone numbers and use a "terminate number" button to make it work. Heck, everyone is used to it already with cell phones.
It's almost like the phone company is taking usability lessons from Microsoft.
I can explanate how to administrate your network. You must configurate and segmentate it, so it can computate.
The promotors of 7 digit dialing throughout the area code (including the telco), cited the convenience for users.
The promotors of 1+ dialing outside the local calling area argued that users should be made aware whenever they were incurring toll costs, i.e., every time they called.
These debates went on at about the same time in both states, with the same telco in both states, and were decided differently. So, VT users dial 1+ for non-local towns, and NH users dial only 7 digits anywhere in the state.
Bottom line, the telcos can implement either system, the lobbyists and regulators may have more say. Of course, the balance of factors may be different in the heavily overloaded metro areas (e.g., greater tech constraints).
"Eventually as the phone number system fills up because of more people having cellphones/pager/fax and a home/office phone line..."
The problem is not too many phones. As others have pointed out, phone numbers are sold to phone, pager, wireless, and other providers in blocks of 10,000. But the real problem is not that these numbers are being used, or reserved. It's that they're never returned, whether they're ever used or not.
The reason is, these companies' bread and butter is the fact that they own your phone number. Wanting to keep the same phone number is the main thing preventing most people from switching to a better/cheaper provider. Heaven forbid these companies should be forced to compete with better service and lower prices!
I think they should. I've been active on this issue for awhile, like 15 years. Write your congressman.
To dial a local number, you hit 503-xxx-xxxx for all calls. Anything long distance still requires the 1- prefix.
Other cities have chosen to assign new area codes by region. This meant existing numbers had to change their a/c. For businesses, this meant repainting vehicles, signs, etc. Portland chose to leave the a/c's alone for established numbers.
I don't want call forwarding, I want to drop two of my three phone numbers!
Any idiot who calls my fax deserves what they get anyway...
Clear, Dark Skies
Actually, that's not entirely accurate, because there are the US-wide notable exceptions such as
411 - Information
611 - Telephone Company (service)
711 - (we always need to know where the nearest one is)
911 - Emergency
Now, NYC wants to add 311 as a goverment services number. I don't know if other places have that too. But naturally, that's at least 40,000,000 (exclude the joke and include the 311) numbers that you can't use unless you ensure the '1' prefix. (ok my math is probably off too, and I'm sure it's not true just because phone systems are probably much more modern than they used to be.)
Not that I agree with having to dial the extra '1' anyway. I've also heard through Verizon (the major NYC phone provider) that although they are advertising a '1' is mandatory, it will actually possible to just dial 10 digits instead of the full 11. I tried dialing it just now, and it worked. But who knows what my phone system is up to before the call reaches the public network?
Here in Richmond, VA, we have landline local number portability -- several people I know have jumped from Verizon to Cavalier Telephone and kept their phone numbers.
Nationally, the cell companies are fighting tooth-and-nail against number portability, though. Why? Because that'll kill one reason people stay with crappy cell carriers. If I could go to, say, Verizon Wireless without having to change my number, I'd have left SunCom behind when my contract expired. But SunCom is just good enough for now that it's not worth changing my number (particularly since I had been using my cell as my only phone for about six months until I got a landline in my new apartment).
... WIN-CE phone HACks YOU!
(sorry.. i really couldn't resist...
it's my first ISR troll... i promise i'll not do it again)
Since when were longer phone numbers considered a sign of progress?
Human short term memory is engineered such that it can only accurately remember about seven chunks of information. Any more digits in a number and the system is not being engineered to cater to people efficiently.
In fact, any phone system that's still based around using numbers should be considered a legacy system that's behind the times and having room for improvement. Number-based systems don't scale up well. Old systems shouldn't be replaced with more complex implementations of the same thing, they should be replaced with name-based systems.
Most mobile phones are based around using names instead of numbers these days, although they're still not perfect because people still have to enter the numbers and therefore think about them.
The Internet's a much better example of using names. The Domain Name System has been around for years. There's almost never a requirement for average users to use an IP address, or even have to realise that they exist. Imagine if you had to remember and type in 06603525015080 all day. (That's Slashdot's IP address adjusted to look more like one of today's phone numbers that people seem to put up with because they think they have to.)
Most people can only hold 7 "things" in their short term memory. Some less, some more. I think I'm a 7-er, toss 8 numbers at me quickly and I'm a bumbling idiot. If they change from 7-digit phone numbers, I will buy stock in Post-it notes.
Why stick up for big business?
Only here it's wonky. We're supposed to have 10-digit, but sometimes I've had to do 11 instead -- seems to depend on a combination of the day of the week, phase of the moon, and whether or not the Miniature Striped-Stomach Frisky Whosit is in heat this month.
:), so now we also have 804 -- and instead of separating them out, they're all overlapping. About four years ago, my phone was moved from 412 to 724 when they added it in -- that time, they made an effort to keep localities constant.
We just had this done about a year ago, when they decided that 412 and 724 weren't enough (too many damn people in Pittsburgh, believe it or not
But living near the edge of the county, sometimes it's a toll call to call down the street about a mile and not a toll to go six or seven in the other direction. That's the fun of being at the edge of the service!
You've gotta be kidding me. In Houston, you've had to use the area code for at least 3 years now. What happened to New York being a leader. Looks like there have been more phone numbers issued in the Houston area than in the New York area, I find that situation pretty funny myself. Just goes to show you the real tech centers are in Texas not in Yankee land.
> until you break your phone
If that ever happens, I'll just take the SIM card out of the old (broken) phone, and put it in the new one... My phone book, settings, everything will all be there. No worries.
If by some freak chance I wreck the phone to the point that my SIM chip dies, I'll just sync my phone book onto the new phone from my Palm's IR port, just like I populated the phone book of my current phone. Hell, my next phone just might be the S/E T68i or the Nokia 3560. So I could just iSync the numbers straight in from the computer.
Anyway you look at it, it's no big deal. The only thing I'd lose sleep over is the waiting, with no phone, from the time I break the old one to the time I get the new one.
cya,
john
Imagine all the people...
You have absolutely no idea how inane this suggestion is. The good thing is, neither do the moderators!
- A.P.
"Remember when the U.S. had a drug problem, and then we declared a War On Drugs, and now you can't buy drugs anymore?"
Call me at W-a-r-g-a-m-e-s.
-- Each tock of the Planck clock is a new world and here we are still life. --
310 areacode users have been punching 11-digits for 2 years now. Lotsa complains at first (3 months) but no further problems now that people are used to it.
Wuss.
How do those numbers get in there in the first place, genius?
Seattle has the same problem. I spend most of my time within the 206 area code. One of my friends lives in 425 but "close enough" that I do not dial a 1. But another friend, who also lives in the 425 area code, lives "too far" away, so I must dial a 1.
Even dumber, if I accidentally dial the 1 for my "close enough" friend, I get a recording that says I do not have to dial a 1. If it's smart enough to play a message telling me it didn't need the 1, why can't it simply ignore it?
Oregon has had 10 digit dialing for several years now, before we "switched" our Maryland relatives told us that they had been doing it for a long time, and it was no big deal. Now when i reach for the phone, i jus punch in 503 without thinking about it.
Allow me to expound on the sheer retardedness of your solution.
Using the current plan, the plan NYC went with (i.e. not your retarded one), the entire metropolitan area of New York City will switch over to 11-digit dialing at a single time. Nobody will have to throw their phone away, get their house rewired, or remember a newer, even longer "phone address". No, instead, what they'll do is dial like they're used to, hear a recorded voice telling them they need to dial 1-212 or 1-917 or 1-718 first from now on, and be done with it.
Using your retarded-ass plan, people will just have to wait 5 or 10 years until everyone's using VOIP (if that ever even happens). They'll need new phones and new phone lines. They'll need to learn dozens or hundreds of new phone numbers But, hot damn! They'll be able to browse the web on their freakin' phone. In the mean time, maybe they can use smoke signals or something.
Your ``solution'' is akin to burning down a house and building a completely new, utterly different one in lieu of adding an addition to the existing structure. Your solution, thoughtlessly shat out in a single line of imbecilic top-posting fervor, is absolutely the worst way to approach this problem short of reintroducing the carrier pigeon.
Congratulations on your +5 score. You've managed to hypnotize the moderators of this site with your blinding idiocy.
Since everyone knows that the first three digits are always 555.
Think of all those web apps that have 3+3+4 digits input boxes for phone numbers... It's the telephonic equivalent of the Year 2000 problem!!!
It'll certainly make pulse dialing a bit more of a hastle than it is already (given that it is still supported!!!)
When I was a boy in the early heighties, we used to have 5 digits dialing in my area (3-4 villages). I come from a rural area with quite low population.
It was the normal seven digits in the form 752-wxyz but it worked to just use the last digit from the first block plus the four others. In out case, it was 2-wxyz. Then at some point, it became necessary to use the full seven digits form.
Technically I think the best way of writing it is: +44 +20 7124 4567, as is the normal practice here in New Zealand. Here we have a nice simple system... an area code which is 0,[3,4,6,7,9]. So it's either 03, 04, 06, 07 or 09. This is followed by a 7 digit number. There are two 'exceptions': the mobile prefix, which is 0,2,[1-9] (where the 3rd digit tells you it's either vodafone cellular, telecom paging, telecom's TDMA network, telecom's CDMA network, or TelstraClear's part of vodafone cellular). There is also 0800 and 0508, which are both free calling (ie. costs the caller nothing), and 0900, which has a specific per minute charge. Of course, here, if the number is 'local' you do not dial the area code. Simple as that. And it costs the same to call a mobile no matter where in the country they are, so it's always 'national' rather than local. And, calling internationall is simply a matter of 00[countrycode][areacode][localnumber]. So you always know where you are calling, and it's easy to do.
Sometimes bad things happen.
It was that long ago (10 years?) that we had party lines and only had to dial four numbers for anything within the same exchange.
--
"Karma can only be portioned out by the cosmos." - Homer Simpson [1F10]
While doing isp tech support in 98 or so, I remember that this was rolled out in texas..
I've always thought that they should have added digits to the end not the beginning...
:)
If I have a number: 1 (123) 555-1234
That should be my phone number.
If I have a pager it could be: 1 (123) 555-1234-2
Fax Machine: 1 (123) 555-1234-3
Cell Phone: 1 (123) 555-1234-4
Etc....
If you could standardize the the extentions it would make it a lot easier to to contact someone. Remember one phone number and just select the service you want....
But then again, what the hell do I know?
Wiwi
"I trust in my abilities,
but I want more then they offer"
It would be much better to have some area codes have more than 7 digits when they get filled up. It's much easier that way than putting 4 more in there, making the total to 11. It could be where existing 7 digit numbers would have like a '1' or a '2' tacked on to the beginning of the number, and they would have like 7 or 8 times the numbers they had before, just by introducing 8 digit numbers.
Sure, convention is good, but sometimes, convention is outgrown. If this continues, then a single city may have up to 3 or 4 area codes.
So how will a NewYorker dial 911 now?
Most of the cities I've lived in have followed the rule that a long distance call (as determined by the increased charge on my phone bill) must be dialed with the 1 prefix while local calls must not have the one.
Most of the gripes I've heard from folks is that if the phone system were smart enough to know you needed to dial a 1 then why doesn't it dial that for us?
I like the idea of knowing when I'm being charged more and when I'm not and think there is a place for both 10 and 11 digit dialing. However I share the frustration of having to re-dial 11 digits because I forgot. Perhaps there could be an audible announcement... "We're sorry you must first dial a one to make this call. In 5 seconds we'll re-dial the call for you." giving you a chance to hang up if you do not wish to pay the extra charge of this "long distance" call.
Because.. NAT is NOT a solution.. NAT is a hack.
I don't want "one ip address". I want to be able to put all my computers on the internet.. FULLY.
That is what IP was *designed* for. The idea was that anyone could get unique address space, even if your network wasn't connected to anyone else.. so one day you could do so.
We need more public IP address space, not less.
...just switch to PNv6? ;)
It's stupid they don't create area codes for cell phones, pagers, and fax. That would free up a lot of numbers in areas codes for regular lines.
The phone system actually supports hex dialing. It's not hard to find rants about it. It wouldn't be so hard to put just one digit into use, say for modem numbers which the average human never needs to remember (and those who do memorize modem numbers will be able to comprehend hex). Just adding 1 digit nearly doubles the number of 7 digit permutations (11^7 / 10^7 ~ 1.9).
Either that, or use a DNS like system to assign names to number/extension pairs.
Set Relocation. Nothing gives me nightmares like walking into an office and finding that they've had Set Relocation turned on for, oh, the last THREE YEARS, and now the ext#'s don't match the port#'s. Set Relocation is one of those features that sounds great, but doesn't actually help.
If a job's not worth doing, it's not worth doing right.
An almost indefinate solution to this problem would be to have everyone dial using IPv6. On the plus side, I'd get a lot fewer harassing phone calls. On the minus side, I might get more spam.
In Soviet America the banks rob you!
...have been doing this for years. We've been doing it for five years in central Maryland. New Yorkers are resourceful and resiliant. They got over the "loss" of the 202 area code as a Manhattan "signature". They'll figure this out too....
Usually there is a transition period where they _allow_ the old way while people get used to it. They will stop allowing it after the transition is over.
T
---- It puts the lotion on its skin or else it gets the hose again. It does this whenever it's told.
We've had to dial 11 digit numbers in the UK for YEARS. All mobiles have to be called with 11 digits. Fortunately we can get away with only having to dial 7 digits in our local area to reach our neighbor over the road, but I know of places that only need 6!
Those of you who use speed dial won't care (except you've got to reprogram your phone) and the others will get used to it . . .
I kicked the drug habit years ago.
The truth doesn't care what I think.
Lo and behold, though, the most important ones were still accessible in wetware. I sat with the new phone and pretended I was dialing my friends and family, and even though I couldn't consciously remember most of their numbers, my fingers danced them right out without hesitation (as long as I didn't think about what I was doing).
The experience made another point on me too; there were a lot of numbers I'd stored that really weren't important to me at all. I've pretty much stopped using the redial capability now except as a handy reference.
This gives me a nice triage system. If your number isn't important enough for me to recall directly you aren't a family member or close friend. If you're a casual friend or new in my life it might be in my "probationary" number store on the phone & Zaurus because I haven't learned it yet.
Otherwise you're a stranger. I'll look it up; if it's unlisted and not important enough to me to memorize it, I probably didn't want to talk to you anyway.
Denver, among other places, has had "overlay" area codes for years now. It saves have the town from having new area codes every time the telco runs out of numbers, and a old friend calling you out of the blue gets you instead of somebody else across town who inherits your old area code and number. Just because it hasn't mader it to the boroughs doesn't mean it doesn't exist. Get a clue, you parochial east coasters!
Very informative post (for those Americans), but 079 is T-Mobile, not Orange. Sorry!
The primary purpose of the DATA statement is to give names to constants;
instead of referring to pi as 3.141592653589793 at every appearance, the
variable PI can be given that value with a DATA statement and used instead
of the longer form of the constant. This also simplifies modifying the
program, should the value of pi change.
-- FORTRAN manual for Xerox Computers
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...