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A split -- all numbers within a certain geographical area change area codes

15 (29.4%)

An overlay -- existing numbers keep the same area code but new numbers get the new area code

25 (49%)

Matters not to me

11 (21.6%)

Total Members Voted: 51

[catch22]

I remember when half the time when you'd call someone, the phone company had a recorded message that said, "We're sorry, all circuits are busy." This was common with Cincinnati Bell up until about 1990. This made it hard to win prizes from radio stations, unless it was a really small station with not many listeners.

Many large cities had dedicated numbers known as "choke exchanges" that were created to filter heavy call volumes to certain numbers such as radio station contests.  These only had a very limited number of trunk connections to "real" central offices and so heavy calling got blocked at the originating CO and thus saved inter-office trunk lines from getting jammed..

In Detroit, 313-298 was (maybe still is, but I've been out of the business for a while now) the choke exchange used by just about every radio station that had listener call-ins.  When I was a business line installer for Michigan Bell early in my telecom career, I provisioned several of these special lines in the radio stations that were in our work area (WDRQ, for one).

Wikipedia article re choke exchanges:  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Choke_exchange

[bandit957]

I remember when half the time when you'd call someone, the phone company had a recorded message that said, "We're sorry, all circuits are busy." This was common with Cincinnati Bell up until about 1990. This made it hard to win prizes from radio stations, unless it was a really small station with not many listeners.

Many large cities had dedicated numbers known as "choke exchanges" that were created to filter heavy call volumes to certain numbers such as radio station contests.  These only had a very limited number of trunk connections to "real" central offices and so heavy calling got blocked at the originating CO and thus saved inter-office trunk lines from getting jammed..

In Detroit, 313-298 was (maybe still is, but I've been out of the business for a while now) the choke exchange used by just about every radio station that had listener call-ins.  When I was a business line installer for Michigan Bell early in my telecom career, I provisioned several of these special lines in the radio stations that were in our work area (WDRQ, for one).

Wikipedia article re choke exchanges:  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Choke_exchange

In Cincinnati, 749 seemed to be the choke exchange for radio stations. But WCLU used 261, which was just a regular exchange. They were lucky because they could announce 261 as AM1 (as they were an AM station).

The main Lexington station I listened to used 280 as its exchange, but I don't know if that was a choke exchange.

[kphoger]

The problem with area code splits is just how many devices that have affected phone numbers programmed in have to be changed, and the headaches caused by businesses and individuals in impacted areas.

Consider someone in Long Beach, CA.

Before 1991, their phone number would have been 213-xxx-yyyy
Then in 1991, their phone number became 310-xxx-yyyy
Then in 1997, their phone number became 562-xxx-yyyy

Every business in what is now in 562 had to change all their letterhead, business cards, etc. twice in six years.  Every device programmed to call a phone in that region had to be reprogrammed twice in six years.

Fortunately, changes in how phone numbers are allocated, and other changes in telecommunications have slowed the rate of number exhaustion in most area codes....and fortunately the CPUC now allows overlays instead of splits, completely eliminating the need for such disruption in the future.

Ooh, good point.

OK, I'm now firmly in favor of overlays.  You pushed me over the line.  I've now changed my vote.

[MikeTheActuary]

The problem with area code splits is just how many devices that have affected phone numbers programmed in have to be changed, and the headaches caused by businesses and individuals in impacted areas.

Consider someone in Long Beach, CA.

Before 1991, their phone number would have been 213-xxx-yyyy
Then in 1991, their phone number became 310-xxx-yyyy
Then in 1997, their phone number became 562-xxx-yyyy

Every business in what is now in 562 had to change all their letterhead, business cards, etc. twice in six years.  Every device programmed to call a phone in that region had to be reprogrammed twice in six years.

Fortunately, changes in how phone numbers are allocated, and other changes in telecommunications have slowed the rate of number exhaustion in most area codes....and fortunately the CPUC now allows overlays instead of splits, completely eliminating the need for such disruption in the future.

Ooh, good point.

OK, I'm now firmly in favor of overlays.  You pushed me over the line.  I've now changed my vote.

The other point I could have made against splits is to point out just how many splits there were before overlays gained acceptance.   There were a LOT of splits...and some locations (area code 562 being one example) were impacted by splits more than once.

For a while in the 1990's, there were a number of folks who had almost full-time jobs just reprogramming systems connected to the telephone work, customer databases, and the like to account for the steady stream of area code splits.

I miss seven-digit dialing...or I would if I bothered to memorize and manually dial local numbers any more...and the old simplicity of knowing the geographies of all the area codes, but I don't miss the headaches of having to deal with so many area code changes.

[mgk920]

There is a place here in downtown Appleton, WI (I believe a nightclub) that calls itself the '920', so these sorts of geographic connections are still common and celebrated.

A brewery in Chicago, IL calls one of their flagship beer brands '312' and I have heard of a club in downtown Chicago that calls itself '606' (USPS ZIP codes for all addresses in the City of Chicago have always been in the '606xx' range).

Mike

[bulldog1979]

We have Upper Peninsula Day every year on September 6th now, or 9/06 to match our area code. (No word on if Bois Blanc Island celebrates it with us; they're the only part of Mackinac County in the 231 area code.)

[kalvado]

There is a place here in downtown Appleton, WI (I believe a nightclub) that calls itself the '920', so these sorts of geographic connections are still common and celebrated.

A brewery in Chicago, IL calls one of their flagship beer brands '312' and I have heard of a club in downtown Chicago that calls itself '606' (USPS ZIP codes for all addresses in the City of Chicago have always been in the '606xx' range).

Mike

How about businesses called Exit X something?
Small catch in our area - I-87 "Northway" has sequential exit numbers starting in the middle of the state, once I-87 is no longer Thruway..

[Otto Yamamoto]

With overlays you can get a situation when two members of a household have two different area codes.

[wxfree]

With overlays you can get a situation when two members of a household have two different area codes.

I know of that happening with cell phones, when a mother and son signed up with the same service, AT&T, but at different store locations and got different area codes.  Today they're no longer in the same household and neither of them lives in the area code they were given.  I don't even look at telephone numbers, and if I see one, I just see a ten-digit block that tells me nothing about where the person is, or even where the person lives.  I remember knowing area codes and prefixes telling me what town a person was in, but that hasn't been the case in years.

We need to go back to when you had to pick up an ear piece and turn a crank to alert the operator, and then tell her that you want to talk to Mr. Drucker at his store.  That way you don't need to worry about numbers.

Oh, wait, we already have that, and it's fully automated.  So who the hell cares?

The only thing I care about is not forcing anyone to change their phone number.  Cell phones accomplish that for most people, but if a store moves across the street to a different area code, they shouldn't be forced to change.  It's not like anyone else is using the old number.  It would be silly to make the store clerk run across the street and climb up the pole to answer the phone just to be on the right side of the line so they can keep their number.  Area code splits are, of course, a much worse form.  If you move to a different state or a hundred miles away and want a landline, that's different.

I was the nerd who knew everyone's telephone number 30 years ago, including the distant relatives no one had seen in 20 years and I'd never met.  If you want to memorize telephone numbers today and dial them (punch them in manually), you're free to do that, but even if you do that, with ten-digit dialing being everywhere, what (beyond technical limitations of landlines) does an area code even mean these days?

[GaryV]

With overlays you can get a situation when two members of a household have two different area codes.

My daughter and her husband have two different area codes. Neither one matches the area where they now live. They both kept the phone numbers they always had.

[kalvado]

with ten-digit dialing being everywhere, what (beyond technical limitations of landlines) does an area code even mean these days?

I believe my landline at work still has a long distance provider fee and associated limitations. Not that I tried that for a while anyways...

[ZLoth]

The only thing I care about is not forcing anyone to change their phone number.  Cell phones accomplish that for most people, but if a store moves across the street to a different area code, they shouldn't be forced to change.  It's not like anyone else is using the old number.  It would be silly to make the store clerk run across the street and climb up the pole to answer the phone just to be on the right side of the line so they can keep their number.

Except that the coverage areas may be handled by different telcos. As an example, Sunrise Mall in Citrus Heights, CA was services at the north end of Roseville Telephone (now Surewest Communications) and was part of the Citrus Heights calling area. The south end of Sunrise Mall was serviced by Pacific Bell (now AT&T), and is part of the Fair Oaks, CA calling area. That is two different landline services.

Of course, with VoIP and mobile services offering unlimited domestic (cross county calling), the copper POTS lines are not being maintained well, with some of it being left to rot. When my mother and moved from Sacramento to Dallas, we went 100% mobile, and kept our old 916 numbers. I had set up Dallas phone numbers as call-forwarding numbers through Google Voice, and about a year and a half ago, ported the Google Voice number to be my main number just to look local.

[kphoger]

With overlays you can get a situation when two members of a household have two different area codes.

My daughter and her husband have two different area codes. Neither one matches the area where they now live. They both kept the phone numbers they always had.

Yeah, I don't see how this is a problem.  My two best friends have a 316 (Kansas) number and a 248 (Michigan) number.  And they live in Mexico.

[vdeane]

I was the nerd who knew everyone's telephone number 30 years ago, including the distant relatives no one had seen in 20 years and I'd never met.  If you want to memorize telephone numbers today and dial them (punch them in manually), you're free to do that, but even if you do that, with ten-digit dialing being everywhere, what (beyond technical limitations of landlines) does an area code even mean these days?

Believe it or not, people still associate area codes with geography, despite everyone having cell phones and keeping their area code when they move.  My cell number has a 585 area code (my number is even directly adjacent to the numbers for my parents, so it has sentimental value beyond the normal convenience factor of keeping it the same), but I now live in the 518/838 area code.  People still do double takes somewhat regularly at my 585 number, though it hasn't been as bad since we got the overlap - before then, people would regularly pre-type 518 when taking a phone number, so they'd need to delete that and put in 585 when putting in mine.

[GaryV]

I worked at a finance company that did debt collection, among other things. There are laws about what time of day you can contact people. It used to be that you could just assign an area code to a time zone (with some edge cases) and figure out what time it was. But mobile phones being, well, mobile, made that simple algorithm break. Now they have to look both at phone numbers and last known address.
 

[hbelkins]

I was the nerd who knew everyone's telephone number 30 years ago, including the distant relatives no one had seen in 20 years and I'd never met.  If you want to memorize telephone numbers today and dial them (punch them in manually), you're free to do that, but even if you do that, with ten-digit dialing being everywhere, what (beyond technical limitations of landlines) does an area code even mean these days?

Believe it or not, people still associate area codes with geography, despite everyone having cell phones and keeping their area code when they move.  My cell number has a 585 area code (my number is even directly adjacent to the numbers for my parents, so it has sentimental value beyond the normal convenience factor of keeping it the same), but I now live in the 518/838 area code.  People still do double takes somewhat regularly at my 585 number, though it hasn't been as bad since we got the overlap - before then, people would regularly pre-type 518 when taking a phone number, so they'd need to delete that and put in 585 when putting in mine.

This is very true in eastern Kentucky.

[kalvado]

I was the nerd who knew everyone's telephone number 30 years ago, including the distant relatives no one had seen in 20 years and I'd never met.  If you want to memorize telephone numbers today and dial them (punch them in manually), you're free to do that, but even if you do that, with ten-digit dialing being everywhere, what (beyond technical limitations of landlines) does an area code even mean these days?

Believe it or not, people still associate area codes with geography, despite everyone having cell phones and keeping their area code when they move.  My cell number has a 585 area code (my number is even directly adjacent to the numbers for my parents, so it has sentimental value beyond the normal convenience factor of keeping it the same), but I now live in the 518/838 area code.  People still do double takes somewhat regularly at my 585 number, though it hasn't been as bad since we got the overlap - before then, people would regularly pre-type 518 when taking a phone number, so they'd need to delete that and put in 585 when putting in mine.

This is very true in eastern Kentucky.

I would expect it depends on the area. Lower mobility rural areas probably will stick to area code identity, hot migration spots are likely to be more agnostic

[bing101]

WHen I lived in California, I remember the 916-530 area code split that took place in November 1st, 1997 that split most of Northeast California (which is sparsely populated) into 530 from the Sacramento area. There was no good way to split the Sacramento area again, so the 279 area code overlay took effect on March 10, 2018. It just meant that everyone now had to dial a full ten digits instead of seven. Try explaining that to a seasoned citizen whose entire life was dialing seven digits, and anything starting with 1 was an expensive long distance call.

On the Dallas side of DFW, we have the 214 area code (1947), 972 (1990), 469 (1999), and 945 (2021, but in standby). On the Fort Worth side, there is 817 (1953) and 682 (2000).

Personally, with number portability and mobile phones, it doesn't really matter as much now as it did years ago when everyone had land lines and calling outside your and neighboring calling area meant a "local long distance" call. I only changed my mobile number from a Sacramento area code to a Dallas area code more to look like a local.

I remember the late 1990's was a crazy time in California where every year certain parts of the state got a new area code.  This 530/916 spit took place at the same time as when San Mateo County changed from 415 to 650, Monterey County switched from 408 to 831, Fresno County moved from 209 to 559, 619 was split to three parts with 760 and 858, South Orange County got 949, San Gabriel Valley moved from 818 to 626 and so on. 


That era was a huge deal back then.

[Ted$8roadFan]

I was the nerd who knew everyone's telephone number 30 years ago, including the distant relatives no one had seen in 20 years and I'd never met.  If you want to memorize telephone numbers today and dial them (punch them in manually), you're free to do that, but even if you do that, with ten-digit dialing being everywhere, what (beyond technical limitations of landlines) does an area code even mean these days?

Believe it or not, people still associate area codes with geography, despite everyone having cell phones and keeping their area code when they move.  My cell number has a 585 area code (my number is even directly adjacent to the numbers for my parents, so it has sentimental value beyond the normal convenience factor of keeping it the same), but I now live in the 518/838 area code.  People still do double takes somewhat regularly at my 585 number, though it hasn't been as bad since we got the overlap - before then, people would regularly pre-type 518 when taking a phone number, so they'd need to delete that and put in 585 when putting in mine.

This is very true in eastern Kentucky.

I would expect it depends on the area. Lower mobility rural areas probably will stick to area code identity, hot migration spots are likely to be more agnostic

It does depend on the locale. Here in Massachusetts, with many in-migrants, some people I know do keep their cell area codes from their former residences, although most tend to be NYC/DC metro area codes.

[Rothman]

I was the nerd who knew everyone's telephone number 30 years ago, including the distant relatives no one had seen in 20 years and I'd never met.  If you want to memorize telephone numbers today and dial them (punch them in manually), you're free to do that, but even if you do that, with ten-digit dialing being everywhere, what (beyond technical limitations of landlines) does an area code even mean these days?

Believe it or not, people still associate area codes with geography, despite everyone having cell phones and keeping their area code when they move.  My cell number has a 585 area code (my number is even directly adjacent to the numbers for my parents, so it has sentimental value beyond the normal convenience factor of keeping it the same), but I now live in the 518/838 area code.  People still do double takes somewhat regularly at my 585 number, though it hasn't been as bad since we got the overlap - before then, people would regularly pre-type 518 when taking a phone number, so they'd need to delete that and put in 585 when putting in mine.

This is very true in eastern Kentucky.

I would expect it depends on the area. Lower mobility rural areas probably will stick to area code identity, hot migration spots are likely to be more agnostic

It does depend on the locale. Here in Massachusetts, with many in-migrants, some people I know do keep their cell area codes from their former residences, although most tend to be NYC/DC metro area codes.

In western MA, Gen Xers and olders will always associate 413 with the area and 617 with Boston.  Going to be weird if they ever get another code for western MA.

[Ted$8roadFan]

I was the nerd who knew everyone's telephone number 30 years ago, including the distant relatives no one had seen in 20 years and I'd never met.  If you want to memorize telephone numbers today and dial them (punch them in manually), you're free to do that, but even if you do that, with ten-digit dialing being everywhere, what (beyond technical limitations of landlines) does an area code even mean these days?

Believe it or not, people still associate area codes with geography, despite everyone having cell phones and keeping their area code when they move.  My cell number has a 585 area code (my number is even directly adjacent to the numbers for my parents, so it has sentimental value beyond the normal convenience factor of keeping it the same), but I now live in the 518/838 area code.  People still do double takes somewhat regularly at my 585 number, though it hasn't been as bad since we got the overlap - before then, people would regularly pre-type 518 when taking a phone number, so they'd need to delete that and put in 585 when putting in mine.

This is very true in eastern Kentucky.

I would expect it depends on the area. Lower mobility rural areas probably will stick to area code identity, hot migration spots are likely to be more agnostic

It does depend on the locale. Here in Massachusetts, with many in-migrants, some people I know do keep their cell area codes from their former residences, although most tend to be NYC/DC metro area codes.

In western MA, Gen Xers and olders will always associate 413 with the area and 617 with Boston.  Going to be weird if they ever get another code for western MA.

Indeed, although the 413 is the slowest growing part of Massachusetts. I don't think it will be getting a new area code any time soon.

[bing101]

https://ktla.com/news/dont-answer-phone-calls-from-these-5-area-codes/


Here is one thats rife with "Subjected to be Updated at some Point" Area codes that are known for scam calls.

[JayhawkCO]

I've never received a call from any of the area codes listed in that article. Mine are pretty regularly 316 or 785 (two Kansas area codes) as I haven't changed my phone number from my 913 (KS side of KC) because it makes it easier to parse which are fake. If someone is calling me from Kansas but I don't have it saved in my address book, it's pretty easy to guess that it's a spam call.

[kphoger]

I've never received a call from any of the area codes listed in that article. Mine are pretty regularly 316 or 785 (two Kansas area codes) as I haven't changed my phone number from my 913 (KS side of KC) because it makes it easier to parse which are fake. If someone is calling me from Kansas but I don't have it saved in my address book, it's pretty easy to guess that it's a spam call.

Meanwhile, I got two calls the other day from a number in Senegal.  The first was in the middle of the night too, and woke my wife and me up out of a deep sleep.

[kalvado]

I've never received a call from any of the area codes listed in that article. Mine are pretty regularly 316 or 785 (two Kansas area codes) as I haven't changed my phone number from my 913 (KS side of KC) because it makes it easier to parse which are fake. If someone is calling me from Kansas but I don't have it saved in my address book, it's pretty easy to guess that it's a spam call.

Meanwhile, I got two calls the other day from a number in Senegal.  The first was in the middle of the night too, and woke my wife and me up out of a deep sleep.

There is a "do not disturb" mode available in most phones today