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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."
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
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
... 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?
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
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.
Ok, mod me down now, that was pretty off topic. Sorry.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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.]
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.
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.
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.
Nevertheless, the area code system in the US seems to be a bit of a mess (at least by looking from the other side of the atlantik.. ;) ). To use 2 or more area code for the same area is somehow strange. In Germany we have one prefix code per area, longer once for rural areas, shorter ones for large cities (to allow for a larger number space with the same total number of digits). So 030 is Berlin, 089 is Munich, while all numbers starting with 08xyy (where y=[0-8]) are numbers around Munich.
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.
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.
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
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
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.
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
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.
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
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.
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.
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
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.
And Mobile phones don't necessarily conform to geographic boundaries. When you roam out of your home area, the cell network has to know where you phone is and route it accordingly. An incomming call gets routed to your home area, then routed back out to your phone. Not much difference than IP routing...
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.