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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."
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Yeah, same in Boston. We recently got some new area codes added to our local calling area, so we have to dial 10 digits instead of the previous 7. We certainly don't have to dial the '1'.
By contrast, however, in Rhode Island (401 for the whole state), when New England Telephone became NYNEX (yes, it was always a subsidiary, but when they actually changed the name), we had to dial '1' + 7 digits if we were calling outside our local calling area, but within 401. Then they became Bell Atlantic, and we had to dial 1+401+7 digits outside the local calling area (but within 401). Then they became verizon, and now you just dial 7 digits anywhere within 401, and it's up to you to remember whether it's a local call or a toll call.
So, I think basically the "1" is at the whim of the phone companies, and it is no longer the reserved digit signifying "long distance". Unless of course the NYT got it wrong. Someone who works for the phone companies (or has hacked into their switches - Hi Kevin!) should explain to us why New Yorkers need to dial a 1 when they have overlay codes, and those of us elsewhere (Boston, DC) don't.
There is no sig, there is only Zuul.
Yes, using IPv6 where the phones are of course connected to a DNS as well is an interesting thought... An international standard for how to "build" these "dial addresses" would be useful as well. They could reuse country codes too. My phone number could be something like:
:-(
... eww
<number>.pitea.bd.se
"pitea" is the city. "bd" is for Norrbotten, the equivalent of a state in the USA. "se" is Sweden.
Quite short for being international too and you'd just need to add a number when necessary (i.e. not restricted to a special format of, say, 9 digits).
But there might be some "funny" moments when someone hack the DNS to redirect a "phone address" to a pr0n number, redir CowboyNeal's number to Hilary Rosen, etc.
Or if a DNS with its backups get an error and you have to phone using IPv6 format to get to the right place: 3ffe:8114:2000:240::1
Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
Unless you make hours of local calls every week, you might want to check if your telco has a plan where *all* calls are toll. This usually costs nine or ten bucks a month plus only pennies per call -- by far the cheapest plan for most people (assuming you have broadband and no teenage children).