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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.
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
get a cellphone and you don't need to think about numbers.
just search a name from the list and press dial
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.
Ok, mod me down now, that was pretty off topic. Sorry.
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 are we running out of phone numbers?
I am not sure how they do things in New York, but down here in Pennsylvania, any time a competing local exchange carrier or a cell phone carrier wants to provide service, they must buy the numbers from Verizon in 10000-sized blocks (1 entire prefix), even if they end up selling only 1 to 9999 lines. When they deregulated the phone system in this state, lots of companies bought up these blocks but never resold anything close to same amount to end-customers. The result (at least in Philadelphia) is that we now have 6 area codes for the city (215, 267 and 445) and suburban (610, 484 and 835) areas although there hasn't been a net gain in population in this region (mostly people moving out of the city and into the suburbs). I read somewhere that they are trying to reduce the block sizes down to 1000 numbers, but I am not sure how this is progressing.
In case of fire, do not use elevator. Use water!
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.
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!
The only solution to that is to hide the number. Using a DNS might not be the best way though (as someone suggested), as the would only mean we need to remember even more oddities.
So how do we remember people's emails? Using automatic address books. How do I remember someones mobile phone number? I don't write them down, and I can't even recall my own number from memory. Again address books.
So the answer is that we will get even more advanced address books that hide away the IP (or whatever ID might be used) simply because it is too hard to remember those numbers. Most phones have these already and it gets easier and easier to exchange mobile phone numbers.
And to make it even easier, I guess it would be easier and easier to redirect calls. For example, I am done with work and am on my way home. My bluetooth in my mobile phone no longer has any connection to the phone at work, so it automatically changes to mobile phone first. When I get home my home phone says hi to my mobile phone, and once again it automatically redirects me. And when someone calls me they automatically get redirected to where I am, and they only need to keep one single entry on me. Simple and easy.
All the technology is there (more or less) already, it all needs to be integrated. And if you are wondering what M$ might be up to, I bet this is something like it (and with emails as well). Just a guess;)
> Why are we running out of phone numbers?
It has to do with the fact that service providers are assigned blocks of numbers, rather than individual numbers for their subscribers. So imagine two service providers A and B. Maybe they both get a single 10,000 block of phone numbers. Imagine that A has 9,000 subscribers (and thus has used 90%) of their numbers, and B has 1,000 subscribers (and has used 10%). If A gains another 2,000 subscribers, they can't use B's number block. They have to apply to the FCC for another block of 10,000 numbers. In the meantime, B is has plenty of room. As a result, you run out of numbers, even though they're not all being used.
Their is a concept called Number Pooling that means that if a service provider has a block of 1,000 numbers that they aren't using, they have to return that block of numbers to the "pool" for other service providers to use. Number Pooling is mandated in many areas under specific circumstances.
The telecom industry is slowly getting away from the idea of number block routing. With Number Portability and Number Pooling, they're moving towards a system that improves on that. Number blocks are "tagged" as having a subscriber that no longer has service with the service provider that owns that block. Then the switch goes to a centralized database and determines where that subscriber is, and the call is routed accordingly.
Number Portability exists in a limited extent today, so in many areas of the country when you move between service providers (but stay in the same service area), you can keep your phone number. So the situation is being alleviated, but New York is probably the biggest market in the country, and things are pretty strained there.
> 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?
Telecom companies are working on this. A concept called ENUM allows subscribers to be assigned IP addresses that are abstracted from the ways the actual call is routed. This is mostly coming about because of VoIP, but it has merits with regular E.164 telephone numbers as well. The telecom industry moves a little slower than the computer industry, so expect to see something like this within 3-5 years. Happy waiting!
Insert simplistic political, ideological, or personal proselytization here.
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.
Before you go running in the streets naked yelling Eureka, consider the privacy implication of the said technology and other related issues. Google it. Thanks.
You, kryonD, are absolutely right (and perceptive) to note that the number of digits is hardly justified, except that the numbers in question are divided among localized geographical areas in an arrangement from a time where phones were much thinner on the ground.
If memory serves, once upon a time, the individual exchanges were nice, neat affairs where human operators interfaced with the system directly, placing and connecting calls through switchboards, with small phone numbers preceded by a few digits which indicated the exchange of the call's recipient. These early prefixes often formed a mnemonic reference; 'Operator, please give me, "Butterfield-six-three-three..."'
The ineficiencies you point out seem to be the result of a system with a lot of built-in legacy thinking which points back to far less sophisticated technologies.
Basically, if everyone in the country, or on earth shared one phone system, putting us all under one umbrella from New York and on to far Beijing, a rationalized system would work but you would be very hard pressed to interest anyone in establishing one.
To mail me, remove the 'mailno' from my email addy.
"Yeah. It smells, too..."