I love seeing the old-style precursor to the ZIP Code in that letter–"Washington 4, D.C." I've always been tempted to try using one of those to send a postcard to a relative just to see if it would work. Something like "Brooklyn 9, NY" instead of "11209."
Quote from: 1995hoo on September 21, 2012, 09:03:21 AM
I love seeing the old-style precursor to the ZIP Code in that letter–"Washington 4, D.C." I've always been tempted to try using one of those to send a postcard to a relative just to see if it would work. Something like "Brooklyn 9, NY" instead of "11209."
Especially because the ZIP code had been introduced by that time, and a government agency should have been using it.
Quote from: 1995hoo on September 21, 2012, 09:03:21 AM
I love seeing the old-style precursor to the ZIP Code in that letter–"Washington 4, D.C." I've always been tempted to try using one of those to send a postcard to a relative just to see if it would work. Something like "Brooklyn 9, NY" instead of "11209."
I wonder why they did that for Washington, but clearly used zip codes for every other town mentioned in the letter (Rolla, MO 65401, etc)?
As a side note, I still occasionally give out my phone number in the "old style", even though that was long out of use by the time I was born. "give me a call at GLendale 4-XXXX"
Quote from: BamaZeus on September 24, 2012, 11:33:12 AM
Quote from: 1995hoo on September 21, 2012, 09:03:21 AM
I love seeing the old-style precursor to the ZIP Code in that letter–"Washington 4, D.C." I've always been tempted to try using one of those to send a postcard to a relative just to see if it would work. Something like "Brooklyn 9, NY" instead of "11209."
I wonder why they did that for Washington, but clearly used zip codes for every other town mentioned in the letter (Rolla, MO 65401, etc)?
The MO towns are all part of the preprinted letterhead, but Washington 4 was typed by whoever. Presumably the typist couldn't be bothered to look up the right zip code or was just hadn't broken the habit of sending them to Washington 4 yet (zip codes were only two years old at this point). Also odd is that the "MO" is omitted from all of those addresses; perhaps it was assumed that all of them would be understood to be in Missouri?
Quote from: 1995hoo on September 21, 2012, 09:03:21 AM
I love seeing the old-style precursor to the ZIP Code in that letter–"Washington 4, D.C." I've always been tempted to try using one of those to send a postcard to a relative just to see if it would work. Something like "Brooklyn 9, NY" instead of "11209."
Sure, it would. You can omit the zipcode entirely and it'll still work. It might be delayed a day or two, that's all.
My experience has been that a wrong zip code is worse than no zip code. If it is omitted, the piece is kicked out for manual treatment, probably for someone to look it up, or if it recognizes the city and state it falls back on that. If the machinery picks up a zip code that turns out to be wrong, the automatic equipment sends the piece into the batch for the incorrect zip code, sending it to the wrong place where it has to be found and turned around. I know someone who actually did an experiment with this kind of thing a couple years ago, sending two pieces the same day to the same address, one without zip code at all, and one with digits transposed. The one with the wrong zip code was almost a week later than the one with none at all. Why they didn't also include a "control" piece with a fully correct address is beyond me--if you're going to do that much of the experiment, why not do everything?
Why do we even need city and state anymore, anyway? Why not just the ZIP? (going off-topic here, I know...)
Quote from: hbelkins on September 24, 2012, 03:35:47 PM
Why do we even need city and state anymore, anyway? Why not just the ZIP? (going off-topic here, I know...)
A typo in the ZIP without an accompanying city and state would not make it to right location. A typo in the ZIP with an accompanying city and state would.
Funny story: When I growing up in rural Kansas, my mom worked at the hospital (this was 1990—1999). At some point during that time, a lady who lived out of town wanted to send a thank you note to my mom for caring for her as a patient. But she didn't know my Mom's last name or our address. So she just mailed the note (from out of town) addressed "Nurse Sue / Atwood, KS". Sure enough, it ended up in my mom's hands.
Quote from: BamaZeus on September 24, 2012, 11:33:12 AM
As a side note, I still occasionally give out my phone number in the "old style", even though that was long out of use by the time I was born. "give me a call at GLendale 4-XXXX"
Interesting that you get away with giving out a 7 digit phone number in any format! Around here, you need an area code to dial anything these days... even simply for differentiation. Give me only the last seven digits and I have to say "hmm, is that 201, 203, 212, 347, 516, 551, 631, 646, 718, 732, 845, 848, 862, 908, 914, 917, 929, 973 or...?" All of those area codes I just listed are within an hour's drive.
Quote from: hbelkins on September 24, 2012, 03:35:47 PM
Why do we even need city and state anymore, anyway? Why not just the ZIP? (going off-topic here, I know...)
Only as a double-check, in case you accidentally transpose the digits. Many PO boxes have a unique 9-digit ZIP code; I tried addressing a card just to that ZIP, nothing else, and it got there fine.
heh, a friend of mine got a package from Belgium addressed only to (somewhat anonymized)
John Smith
USA-12345
no street address, but it arrived, as 12345 is a very small town, and the mailman knew my friend by name.
Quote from: agentsteel53 on September 24, 2012, 07:34:52 PM
heh, a friend of mine got a package from Belgium addressed only to (somewhat anonymized)
John Smith
USA-12345
no street address, but it arrived, as 12345 is a very small town, and the mailman knew my friend by name.
This goes back maybe 10-12 years, but I moved to a place that had a rural route address (Rt. 1, Box 123A). Apparently it took my grandmother back to the good ol' days, because I got a package addressed
My Name
Route 1
Appomattox, Va
The ordeal I went through to get said Route 1 address is another story, but I got my mail just fine. UPS had a fit, though, since you couldn't find it on a map.
Walter Gretzky said that when his son played for the Oilers he'd receive fan mail with addresses like "Wayne Gretzky, Kanada." Canada Post knew who Wayne Gretzky was and sent it all to Edmonton.
Around here rural routes have box numbers appended to them. So it's not just Route 1, it's something "Route 1 Box 53". Before the Goldsby/Washington area received actual street addresses, our address was "RR 1 Box 31-B1" since we were at the "beginning" of our subdivision, then our across the street neighbor was "Box 31-B1A", then "B1B" was next to us, the "B1C'...
That's what I meant, and since you split this off, I'll go into more detail.
My address was Rt. 1 Box 564C, Appomattox VA 24522 (this address doesn't exist anymore, so don't worry.)
My grandmother, rest her soul, saw the RR part and always sent me things as Rt. 1, Appomattox, no ZIP; apparently going back to her depression-era mind or whatever.
The process of getting my box was a bit convoluted. When I bought the house it had no mailbox - the previous owner had a PO Box in town. I called the PO and asked about having an address, they told me to put up a box with a piece of paper inside, and put up the flag. The mailman would give me an address. A week later, no address. Called the PO, after a bit of talk, I found out the mailman didn't come down my road...I had to petition for a RR extension. It was granted, and I got my address. To the day I moved out the mailman turned around in my driveway and went back up the road. Now it has a name and a proper address, damn them to hell.
The power company had the same problem. The service stopped at my house, so guess who was the last to get reconnected after a storm? Good thing I had a wood stove.
Just as a public service to those who read from the bottom up (ie Off-topic, then the roads stuff) such as myself and are confused as hell about "that letter," it's referring to this:
https://www.aaroads.com/forum/index.php?topic=87.msg174863#msg174863
Quote from: kphoger on September 24, 2012, 06:31:25 PM
Quote from: hbelkins on September 24, 2012, 03:35:47 PM
Why do we even need city and state anymore, anyway? Why not just the ZIP? (going off-topic here, I know...)
A typo in the ZIP without an accompanying city and state would not make it to right location. A typo in the ZIP with an accompanying city and state would.
Funny story: When I growing up in rural Kansas, my mom worked at the hospital (this was 1990—1999). At some point during that time, a lady who lived out of town wanted to send a thank you note to my mom for caring for her as a patient. But she didn't know my Mom's last name or our address. So she just mailed the note (from out of town) addressed "Nurse Sue / Atwood, KS". Sure enough, it ended up in my mom's hands.
A couple years ago, the state of Maryland sent me a letter (asking me why I didn't file a state tax return with them for a year when I never lived in Maryland). They addressed it to my correct street address, but for the town/state part of the address they used "Norman, MD" and the zip code they used had a couple transposed digits, causing it to correspond to some town in Texas. The letter still somehow made it.
Back in the 1980s I messed up the ZIP code on something I was sending to my grandparents in Brooklyn–I wrote the ZIP code for Far Rockaway, where my other grandmother lived. They received it anyway, said it arrived with the "11691" crossed out and "11209" written in its place. I guess back then they didn't have the same degree of automated mail-sorting they do now and so it was more likely that mistakes of that sort would be caught.
Quote from: Duke87 on September 24, 2012, 07:19:02 PM
Quote from: BamaZeus on September 24, 2012, 11:33:12 AM
As a side note, I still occasionally give out my phone number in the "old style", even though that was long out of use by the time I was born. "give me a call at GLendale 4-XXXX"
Interesting that you get away with giving out a 7 digit phone number in any format! Around here, you need an area code to dial anything these days... even simply for differentiation. Give me only the last seven digits and I have to say "hmm, is that 201, 203, 212, 347, 516, 551, 631, 646, 718, 732, 845, 848, 862, 908, 914, 917, 929, 973 or...?" All of those area codes I just listed are within an hour's drive.
Fortunately, although Alabama has 4 different area codes, they're regional ones and not overlays, at least for now. We can still dial only 7 digits to complete a call unless calling a different part of the state. My wife and I do have two different area codes for our phones, though, since she originally got her phone while living in the Huntsville area and I got mine here in Tuscaloosa.
*EDIT* I stand corrected. I checked into it and apparently since 2010 NE Alabama now has an overlay area code 938 that I have yet to dial myself. It overlays the 256 Huntsville/Shoals/Anniston/Gadsden area, and apparently requires 10 digit dialing there.
I figure it's only a matter of time until Birmingham gets its own code and West Alabama is given something other than 205.
Quote from: 1995hoo on September 25, 2012, 09:59:27 AM
Back in the 1980s I messed up the ZIP code on something I was sending to my grandparents in BrooklynI wrote the ZIP code for Far Rockaway, where my other grandmother lived. They received it anyway, said it arrived with the "11691" crossed out and "11209" written in its place. I guess back then they didn't have the same degree of automated mail-sorting they do now and so it was more likely that mistakes of that sort would be caught.
Even with automated sorting, I believe the "error" ones still go into a bin and are sorted by hand. So, even if a letter went to the wrong substation due to a ZIP error, then there would still be a person there to manually figure out the correction and forward it on.
Quote from: kphoger on September 25, 2012, 01:36:51 PM
Quote from: 1995hoo on September 25, 2012, 09:59:27 AM
Back in the 1980s I messed up the ZIP code on something I was sending to my grandparents in BrooklynI wrote the ZIP code for Far Rockaway, where my other grandmother lived. They received it anyway, said it arrived with the "11691" crossed out and "11209" written in its place. I guess back then they didn't have the same degree of automated mail-sorting they do now and so it was more likely that mistakes of that sort would be caught.
Even with automated sorting, I believe the "error" ones still go into a bin and are sorted by hand. So, even if a letter went to the wrong substation due to a ZIP error, then there would still be a person there to manually figure out the correction and forward it on.
That's right. I used to work at the Hickory, NC plant before they shut it down. Sometimes the machine will kick it out if it's an obvious mismatch, or the destination post office will send it back to have us manually work it. Packages are even easier since they're manually sorted anyway. The most common error I've seen is people putting their own zip code instead of where it's actually going.
Quote from: Duke87 on September 24, 2012, 07:19:02 PM
Quote from: BamaZeus on September 24, 2012, 11:33:12 AM
As a side note, I still occasionally give out my phone number in the "old style", even though that was long out of use by the time I was born. "give me a call at GLendale 4-XXXX"
Interesting that you get away with giving out a 7 digit phone number in any format! Around here, you need an area code to dial anything these days... even simply for differentiation. Give me only the last seven digits and I have to say "hmm, is that 201, 203, 212, 347, 516, 551, 631, 646, 718, 732, 845, 848, 862, 908, 914, 917, 929, 973 or...?" All of those area codes I just listed are within an hour's drive.
Even another one: 475 (overlay of 203)
If you are mailing it at the post office, they can correct the error there. I was sending a package once and transposed two digits on the zip code. When I went to send it, the automated postal kiosk rejected the address as invalid and told me to see a clerk. The clerk was able to type in the address and get the correct zip code, crossing my bad zip out and writing the correct one.
Quote from: Duke87 on September 24, 2012, 07:19:02 PM
Quote from: BamaZeus on September 24, 2012, 11:33:12 AM
As a side note, I still occasionally give out my phone number in the "old style", even though that was long out of use by the time I was born. "give me a call at GLendale 4-XXXX"
Interesting that you get away with giving out a 7 digit phone number in any format! Around here, you need an area code to dial anything these days... even simply for differentiation. Give me only the last seven digits and I have to say "hmm, is that 201, 203, 212, 347, 516, 551, 631, 646, 718, 732, 845, 848, 862, 908, 914, 917, 929, 973 or...?" All of those area codes I just listed are within an hour's drive.
As a force of habit, I always tend to give the area code when referencing a telephone number, probably since my cell phone (also my primary phone) has a 315 area code, whereas I live in the 518 area code. I've had the same phone number since I was in college and see no reason to change.
Using the ZIP+4 (those extra four digits at the end of a zip code) is a bit trickier for me to do, but it's helpful to use whenever possible.
Quote from: Scott5114 on September 26, 2012, 04:32:50 AM
If you are mailing it at the post office, they can correct the error there. I was sending a package once and transposed two digits on the zip code. When I went to send it, the automated postal kiosk rejected the address as invalid and told me to see a clerk. The clerk was able to type in the address and get the correct zip code, crossing my bad zip out and writing the correct one.
You can do the same address look-up on the USPS website.
Mike
Quote from: BamaZeus on September 24, 2012, 11:33:12 AM
Quote from: 1995hoo on September 21, 2012, 09:03:21 AM
I love seeing the old-style precursor to the ZIP Code in that letter–"Washington 4, D.C." I've always been tempted to try using one of those to send a postcard to a relative just to see if it would work. Something like "Brooklyn 9, NY" instead of "11209."
I wonder why they did that for Washington, but clearly used zip codes for every other town mentioned in the letter (Rolla, MO 65401, etc)?
As a side note, I still occasionally give out my phone number in the "old style", even though that was long out of use by the time I was born. "give me a call at GLendale 4-XXXX"
The city x, state was prezip codes... large cities had zones that became the last part of the zip code. My grandparents lived in Jacksonville 10, Fla. Post zip-code it was Jacksonville, FL 32210... Remember the 2 letter state abbreviations became official w zip codes... many of the abbreviations are the same but in all caps (ie Md. became MD, N.J. became NJ)
,
Area codes officially NPA have some interesting history. Originally, they had to have a 0 or a 1 as the middle digit. If the state had one area code the middle digit was 0 and if more than one the middle digit was a 1. ( ie Florida at one time was all 305, and New York was 212 for the city and prob 716 for Buffalo( not sure of that) That pretty quickly changed. More important places has less clicks on a dial phone 212 was given to NYC that was 5 clicks. 803 to SC which was 21 clicks. Backwaters were given exchanges like 899... when i was a kid back in the 70s and push-button phones were extra money my dad wouldnt pay for it so dialing 899-9779 took forever
Many of the Caribbean nations' area codes are built-in mnemonic devices:
264 = ANG = Anguilla
268 = ANT = Antigua
284 = BVI = British Virgin Islands
473 = GRE - Grenada
758 = SLU = Saint Lucia
767 = ROS = Dominica, whose capital is Roseau
784 = SVG = Saint Vincent & the Grenadines
868 = TNT = Trinidad and Tobago
Also, the Canadian territories are at the 867 (TOP) of the world.
Quote from: Dougtone on September 26, 2012, 06:52:17 AM
As a force of habit, I always tend to give the area code when referencing a telephone number, probably since my cell phone (also my primary phone) has a 315 area code, whereas I live in the 518 area code. I've had the same phone number since I was in college and see no reason to change.
I actually do the same, since my area code is 585, but my 7-digit number starts with 315, which is also an adjacent area code to mine. When in my home area, I assume people will hear 315 as my area code if I don't start by saying 585; of course, that matters less now that I don't live there.
Also, it's been a while, but I used to get a lot of calls for an apartment complex that had the same number as mine but with an 866 area code, and is located in the same county.
Quote from: kphoger on September 26, 2012, 04:37:44 PM
Many of the Caribbean nations' area codes are built-in mnemonic devices:
264 = ANG = Anguilla
268 = ANT = Antigua
284 = BVI = British Virgin Islands
473 = GRE - Grenada
758 = SLU = Saint Lucia
767 = ROS = Dominica, whose capital is Roseau
784 = SVG = Saint Vincent & the Grenadines
868 = TNT = Trinidad and Tobago
Also, the Canadian territories are at the 867 (TOP) of the world.
Legend has it Las Vegas wanted 777 when they were going to add a code to Nevada but there is or was some kind of rule about triple digit codes so they got 775 instead.
When the 606 area code was split, the Lexington area got 859 (UKY).
I prefer an overlay to changing or splitting an area code. It's not that much more inconvenient to have to dial 10 digits instead of seven, and you have to dial 11 digits if you make a long-distance call anyway.
For more than half of my life, you only had to dial the last four digits of a phone number here to make a local call. The county was small enough that only one prefix was needed. In other places, such as Morehead where I went to college and Irvine where I worked for several years, you dialed the last five digits.
The original landline exchange for Jackson, where I work, was (and remains) 666. :evilgrin:
Quote from: 6a on September 26, 2012, 08:15:43 PM
Legend has it Las Vegas wanted 777 when they were going to add a code to Nevada but there is or was some kind of rule about triple digit codes so they got 775 instead.
The rule is actually that area codes ending in double digits are reserved for special use–called ERCs (Easily Recognizable Codes)–such as toll-free numbers. So it wasn't the fact that it was all 7s, but rather that it ended in a double digit.
I recall the mid-1990s revision to the area code scheme (allowance of middle digits other than zero or one) causing some problems for various telephone companies. I was in my final year at UVA when the first of those new area codes were introduced and I recall the local phone company management being very upset because they had to change the dialing protocol for long-distance calls within the same area code–prior to the change, if we wanted to make a long-distance call within the 804 area code (say, if I wanted to call my brother, who attended William & Mary), we were to dial 1 plus the seven-digit phone number without the area code (e.g., 1-971-2964). The new area codes forced them to change to requiring the area code for all long-distance calls (which is what I had been used to before I went away to college) because the "971" could now be used as an area code (it's now assigned to Oregon).
Conversely, I remember when I was a kid we didn't have to dial the area code to call from Northern Virginia to the District of Columbia or parts of Maryland except when calling long-distance to Maryland. The three-digit prefixes were not duplicated across the local jurisdictions at the time (so, for example, 573-7470 was assigned solely to the house we lived in back in the 1970s and nobody in DC or Maryland had that number). Eventually when they started running out of numbers we had to add the area code for calls to the other jurisdictions (202 for DC, 301 for Maryland) so that they could re-use prefixes, but the requirement of ten-digit dialing for all local calls came a lot later. Even though we now have to use the area code for every call due to the overlay codes, I still know quite a few people who will omit the area code when saying their number under the assumption that the person hearing the number will assume it's a 703 number unless otherwise specified.
I recall over the years some people having lots of problems remembering to add the "1" for long-distance calls. In the late 1990s the office where I worked in downtown DC had phone numbers beginning with "310." I kept getting wrong-number calls from people trying to call Los Angeles, presumably because they forgot to dial "1" and so after seven digits the call went to me.
Quote from: 6a on September 26, 2012, 08:15:43 PM
Quote from: kphoger on September 26, 2012, 04:37:44 PM
Many of the Caribbean nations' area codes are built-in mnemonic devices:
264 = ANG = Anguilla
268 = ANT = Antigua
284 = BVI = British Virgin Islands
473 = GRE - Grenada
758 = SLU = Saint Lucia
767 = ROS = Dominica, whose capital is Roseau
784 = SVG = Saint Vincent & the Grenadines
868 = TNT = Trinidad and Tobago
Also, the Canadian territories are at the 867 (TOP) of the world.
Legend has it Las Vegas wanted 777 when they were going to add a code to Nevada but there is or was some kind of rule about triple digit codes so they got 775 instead.
The Space Coast area of Florida (Melbourne, Merritt Island, etc.) has area code 321. I'm sure that's not a coincidence given the NASA presence there.
Regarding ZIP codes, somebody mentioned the ZIP+4 codes further up the thread. I always use ours when feasible, but I find it amusing that some online forms simply refuse to accept the "+4" portion. Most of them will accept six characters to allow for Canadian postal codes, but I've found that quite a few won't allow any more than that.
Irony of ironies -- Kentucky just announced today that a new area code is needed in the western part of the state. It's going to be 364; now they have to decide if they want to do a split or an overlay.
Quote from: 1995hoo on September 27, 2012, 04:10:10 PMwe didn't have to dial the area code to call from Northern Virginia to the District of Columbia or parts of Maryland except when calling long-distance to Maryland.
that seems awfully arbitrary and tough to remember. why is some of Maryland long-distance and some not?
I much prefer today's 10-digit dialing scheme, especially with the proliferation of cell phones whose area codes do not match their owner's primary location.
Quote from: agentsteel53 on September 27, 2012, 04:43:50 PM
Quote from: 1995hoo on September 27, 2012, 04:10:10 PMwe didn't have to dial the area code to call from Northern Virginia to the District of Columbia or parts of Maryland except when calling long-distance to Maryland.
that seems awfully arbitrary and tough to remember. why is some of Maryland long-distance and some not?
I much prefer today's 10-digit dialing scheme, especially with the proliferation of cell phones whose area codes do not match their owner's primary location.
I save all my contacts as 10-digit numbers in my cell phone, even though I could dial the local ones as seven digits if I preferred. It especially makes it easy when dialing from out of state, as it's necessary then to add the area code anyway. Roaming in México still confuses the heck out of me, though–whether to dial a local number as a local number, a long-distance number, or an international number; the answer seems to vary by provider and type of phone (land/cell) I'm dialing.
Quote from: agentsteel53 on September 27, 2012, 04:43:50 PM
Quote from: 1995hoo on September 27, 2012, 04:10:10 PMwe didn't have to dial the area code to call from Northern Virginia to the District of Columbia or parts of Maryland except when calling long-distance to Maryland.
that seems awfully arbitrary and tough to remember. why is some of Maryland long-distance and some not?
I much prefer today's 10-digit dialing scheme, especially with the proliferation of cell phones whose area codes do not match their owner's primary location.
I have no idea how it works now–especially since I no longer pay extra for long-distance calls–much less how it worked in the days of the Bell System prior to the breakup, but I believe the phone companies define(d) a "local calling area" (that might not be the technical term) and so calls within that area are local calls even if the area code differs, although at the same time calls within the same area code but outside that local area might be long-distance. Consider geography and it's easy enough to understand why a call from, say, Fairfax County in Virginia to Bethesda in Maryland should be a "local" call but a call from Fairfax County in Virginia to the town of Accident in the far corner of the Maryland panhandle should be a long-distance call. Or if you viewed it in reverse it would be even easier to understand–if you were calling from Bethesda to Virginia, surely no reasonable person would argue that a call to Big Stone Gap (way down in Southwest Virginia near the Kentucky state line) ought to be considered a "local" call, especially when Big Stone Gap is further from Northern Virginia than New York City is (and New York has always been a long-distance call from around here).
Obviously the idea of long-distance calls within the same area code is a lot less common in much of the USA than it was 25 years ago except in a few states that retain single area codes (Maine is an example). Originally ALL of Virginia was within the 703 area code, for example, until 804 was split off in the mid-1970s. My example of calling from the DC area to Big Stone Gap is a good example of what back then would have been a long-distance call within the area code, although I don't recall the "1" prefix being required for long-distance until sometime in the 1980s. I wasn't all that interested in this sort of thing at the time and so I don't recall when or why the "1" was added, but I believe I read somewhere that the point of requiring the "1" was to allow additional area codes that previously wouldn't have been permitted–that is, area codes that duplicated local exchanges. The "1" tells the system the next three digits are an area code rather than a local exchange–which goes back to the example I cited in my prior post of dingbats who were trying to call from DC to Los Angeles and instead rang my office on K Street because omitting the "1" made the phone system interpret "310" as a local exchange in "310-xxxx."
I don't know where the boundary is/was, but I seem to recall that Baltimore was always a long-distance call. In terms of population location that makes sense; while nowadays the DC and Baltimore areas are sometimes considered to be a large urban area, that wasn't really the case 30 and 40 years ago.
But it wasn't really that big a deal from a practical standpoint: If you tried to call Baltimore without the area code, you either found you had called the wrong number or you got an error message from the phone company.
Come to think of it, I seldom dial "1" on my mobile phone when I make a call except for some toll-free calls that don't go through without it.
I believe the 1 became mandatory when local exchanges started having 0 and 1 as the middle digit, and/or when area codes had digits other than 0 and 1 as the middle digit. before that, it was unambiguous: if the second digit dialed was a 0 or 1, it was a 10 digit number, otherwise it was 7.
I never dial a 1, but sometimes my phone adds it.
Quote from: agentsteel53 on September 27, 2012, 05:52:08 PM
I believe the 1 became mandatory when local exchanges started having 0 and 1 as the middle digit, and/or when area codes had digits other than 0 and 1 as the middle digit. before that, it was unambiguous: if the second digit dialed was a 0 or 1, it was a 10 digit number, otherwise it was 7.
I never dial a 1, but sometimes my phone adds it.
I just looked at the phonebook on our home phone and I see we've put in the "1" for some numbers but not others. I assume the phone probably adds it automatically when needed because the setup menu has a section where you program in your local area codes–I assume that means if a number uses an area code not on that list, it treats it as a long-distance call. I never really thought about it until this thread because the calls just go through, but I have no idea why we sometimes put in the "1" and sometimes didn't.
There was the time I lived in Old Orchard Beach, ME between September of 1985 and June of 1987. Every number in the town started with (207)-934-XXXX. Also, with this being in the last days of rotary dial phones for many, it was possible to just dial 4-XXXX if making a call with the town. I'm sure it was the same way when I was a little kid in nearby Wells, ME from 1974 to October of 1977. Every number there was (207)-646-XXXX.
Here in Connecticut, the state was split up at the end of August of 1995. What was once all (203) became two zones:
Fairfield (except the Town of Sherman), New Haven, and Litchfield (the towns of Woodbury, Bethlehem, and a small part of Roxbury).
The (860) area code was created on August 28, 1995 as a split from area code (203) when the latter was cut back to Fairfield County (except for the Town of Sherman) and New Haven County, plus the towns of Bethlehem, Woodbury, and a small part of Roxbury in Litchfield County. Use of (860) became mandatory October 4, 1996. We're soon supposed to have a (959) overlay here. Ten-digit dialing is mandatory here as well, even if calling a neighbor across the street.
As for the Zip+4 thing on the zip code, it's almost never used by many people here. I'll use it if I'm addressing an envelope (XXXXX-1735) or if a job or credit card application asks for it. The mail takes the same amount of time to and from here, whether I use it or not.
The USPS' postmarker/stamp cancelling machines also include a step where they will read the 'to' addresses on the envelops (they can quickly resolve some pretty bad chicken scratch, too!), look them up in their database and add those correct nine-digit ZIP Code barcodes that are found below the addresses - this as the letters are shooting through those machines. With that barcode, they can then machine sort those letters every step of the way down to the block for final delivery.
Many word-processing programs can put those barcodes on envelops before letters are mailed, too.
Pretty amazing, IMHO.
Mike
Regarding how some of Maryland could be long-distance - Within your area code, you had a local dialing area that was toll free, and then outside that area was long distance. 201 covered all of North Jersey, but my local dialing area was Essex County (give or take). If I wanted to call New Brunswick (before the 908 split), it would have been long distance within my area code, so I could have done it in seven digits. Of course, being a child, I wasn't allowed long distance, so I don't know about the dialing 1.
In Kentucky, in general local calling areas are limited to your county. Anything outside your county is long distance.
Quote from: agentsteel53 on September 27, 2012, 04:43:50 PM
Quote from: 1995hoo on September 27, 2012, 04:10:10 PMwe didn't have to dial the area code to call from Northern Virginia to the District of Columbia or parts of Maryland except when calling long-distance to Maryland.
that seems awfully arbitrary and tough to remember. why is some of Maryland long-distance and some not?
I much prefer today's 10-digit dialing scheme, especially with the proliferation of cell phones whose area codes do not match their owner's primary location.
In the D.C. area, everything inside the Capital Beltway was local to everything else, even though there were (back in the day) three area codes involved (202, 301 and 703). The local calling area extended some distance beyond the Capital Beltway as well. Rockville, the City of Fairfax, Springfield, Bowie and Greenbelt were local to each other. But Gaithersburg was beyond that boundary, as were Lorton, Herndon, Waldorf and Laurel (if you lived in those places, you could pay a little extra for an exchange that was "closer-in" and thus local to other places around the Beltway.
Before the area code expansion thing in the early 1990s (allowing 2-8 as the second digit), there were many instances along area code boundaries such as calling out of Weyauwega, WI (then 414-867, now 920-867, et al) - next-door Waupaca, WI (715-258, etc) was a seven-digit local call. Someone in Weyauwega dialing '258-xxxx' would get someone in Waupaca while that same someone adding a '1' to the dialed number string ('1-258-xxxx') would instead get someone in suburban Milwaukee (Menominee Falls, then 414-258, now 262-258, et al).
Today, local landline calls from Weyauwega to Waupaca are 1+10d, while calls within Weyauwega are still just 7d.
As for me (cell phone with a number starting with 920-810), I just dial all outgoing calls as 10 digit numbers. It saves me a lot of needless confusion.
Mike
I never use the extra four digits on the ZIP code. Except if it's going to the government. Because, then, I want to make darned sure I addressed it the way they said to.
Quote from: hbelkins on September 28, 2012, 11:01:21 AM
In Kentucky, in general local calling areas are limited to your county. Anything outside your county is long distance.
I was told by a BellSouth customer service lady that Atlanta has the largest local calling area in the world - you can call a small part of Alabama as a local call. It was weird moving to a place like you describe, where only a couple miles can make the difference.
Quote from: kphoger on September 28, 2012, 01:56:40 PM
I never use the extra four digits on the ZIP code. Except if it's going to the government. Because, then, I want to make darned sure I addressed it the way they said to.
I usually don't for my home address; I always do for my Clarkson box, since the last four are the box number, though the mail room is good about sorting mail by box so just the one in the street address line would probably suffice.
Fun fact: Clarkson has it's on zip code - 13699 (rest of Potsdam is 13676).
At some point in the next 30 years we're going to run out of phone numbers. There are some proposals out there, like adding a 0 at the end of area codes and making area codes four digits. But any new numbering plan needs to be settled now, so that new equipment can be manufactured that's ready for the change.
Quote from: Road Hog on September 29, 2012, 09:04:51 AM
At some point in the next 30 years we're going to run out of phone numbers. There are some proposals out there, like adding a 0 at the end of area codes and making area codes four digits. But any new numbering plan needs to be settled now, so that new equipment can be manufactured that's ready for the change.
Nope, not even close. Not even half the area codes that are available under current requirements now are being used, and this last decade has seen area code allotment slow to no more than 2/year. In fact, we're in the middle of a process in which numbers themselves are alloted in 1000-number increments instead of the previous 10000-number increment. So, instead of a company getting an allotment like 303-979-xxxx, you are seeing a company get 303-979-9xxx.
Confusing, to be sure. Also, it helps the phone numbers last a few more generations.
Quote from: brad2971 on September 29, 2012, 09:12:31 AM
Quote from: Road Hog on September 29, 2012, 09:04:51 AM
At some point in the next 30 years we're going to run out of phone numbers. There are some proposals out there, like adding a 0 at the end of area codes and making area codes four digits. But any new numbering plan needs to be settled now, so that new equipment can be manufactured that's ready for the change.
Nope, not even close. Not even half the area codes that are available under current requirements now are being used, and this last decade has seen area code allotment slow to no more than 2/year. In fact, we're in the middle of a process in which numbers themselves are alloted in 1000-number increments instead of the previous 10000-number increment. So, instead of a company getting an allotment like 303-979-xxxx, you are seeing a company get 303-979-9xxx.
Confusing, to be sure. Also, it helps the phone numbers last a few more generations.
In fact, over the past several years, quite a few 10K blocks have been returned to the assignment pool - those that were used by the paging companies (remember them?).
Should lightning ever strike and the 'World Zone 1' number pool need to be expanded, provision has already been made for that - area codes ('NPA's) would be expanded to four digits with the addition of a '9' in position 2. Thus, for example, my home '920' would become '9920'. This would allow for a transitional dialing period and is why there are no area codes with a '9' in the middle position. Once the permissive transitional dialing period is over, the numbers 0-8 would be allowed in that position. Also, as before, position three in that new number will not be a '9', again to allow for any potential further future expansion.
As it stands now, we could add Mexico, rest of Central America and the Caribbean to the 'World Zone 1' numbering area and still be in no danger of running out of numbers within the rest of my lifetime.
Mike
Quote from: mgk920 on September 29, 2012, 10:56:24 AM
Quote from: brad2971 on September 29, 2012, 09:12:31 AM
Quote from: Road Hog on September 29, 2012, 09:04:51 AM
At some point in the next 30 years we're going to run out of phone numbers. There are some proposals out there, like adding a 0 at the end of area codes and making area codes four digits. But any new numbering plan needs to be settled now, so that new equipment can be manufactured that's ready for the change.
Nope, not even close. Not even half the area codes that are available under current requirements now are being used, and this last decade has seen area code allotment slow to no more than 2/year. In fact, we're in the middle of a process in which numbers themselves are alloted in 1000-number increments instead of the previous 10000-number increment. So, instead of a company getting an allotment like 303-979-xxxx, you are seeing a company get 303-979-9xxx.
Confusing, to be sure. Also, it helps the phone numbers last a few more generations.
In fact, over the past several years, quite a few 10K blocks have been returned to the assignment pool - those that were used by the paging companies (remember them?).
Should lightning ever strike and the 'World Zone 1' number pool need to be expanded, provision has already been made for that - area codes ('NPA's) would be expanded to four digits with the addition of a '9' in position 2. Thus, for example, my home '920' would become '9920'. This would allow for a transitional dialing period and is why there are no area codes with a '9' in the middle position. Once the permissive transitional dialing period is over, the numbers 0-8 would be allowed in that position. Also, as before, position three in that new number will not be a '9', again to allow for any potential further future expansion.
As it stands now, we could add Mexico, rest of Central America and the Caribbean to the 'World Zone 1' numbering area and still be in no danger of running out of numbers within the rest of my lifetime.
Mike
And of course, let's not forget the fact that Cell Number Portability (since late 2003!) and Local Number Portability have both helped slow down the issuance of numbers. Not to mention, something along the lines of 30 million local access lines have been disconnected just in the last decade.
Quote from: 6a on September 28, 2012, 04:43:42 PM
Quote from: hbelkins on September 28, 2012, 11:01:21 AM
In Kentucky, in general local calling areas are limited to your county. Anything outside your county is long distance.
I was told by a BellSouth customer service lady that Atlanta has the largest local calling area in the world - you can call a small part of Alabama as a local call. It was weird moving to a place like you describe, where only a couple miles can make the difference.
Both Denver and Phoenix would greatly beg to differ. You can make a call from Longmont to Castle Rock (freeway distance about 60 miles) and it's still local. A call from Buckeye in the far West Valley to Apache Junction in the far East Valley (freeway distance close to 70 miles) is also a local call.
Quote from: brad2971 on September 29, 2012, 11:23:58 AM
Quote from: 6a on September 28, 2012, 04:43:42 PM
Quote from: hbelkins on September 28, 2012, 11:01:21 AM
In Kentucky, in general local calling areas are limited to your county. Anything outside your county is long distance.
I was told by a BellSouth customer service lady that Atlanta has the largest local calling area in the world - you can call a small part of Alabama as a local call. It was weird moving to a place like you describe, where only a couple miles can make the difference.
Both Denver and Phoenix would greatly beg to differ. You can make a call from Longmont to Castle Rock (freeway distance about 60 miles) and it's still local. A call from Buckeye in the far West Valley to Apache Junction in the far East Valley (freeway distance close to 70 miles) is also a local call.
Minneapolis-St. Paul is similarly large. It extends from Cambridge on the north to LeSueur, in the 507 area, on the south, about 70 miles. That's at least five area codes (I'm not sure if any area code 320 exchanges are within the MSP area), with no overlays, that have partial or full coverage within that free calling area. Nothing is free, of course, because every time the calling area would expand, my base phone rate would go up by a few cents.
Area codes have sure popped up like weeds in TX. About 25+ years ago, there were maybe 7 or 8 in the whole state--now there are like 25 or so. There are now 9 in the greater north TX area (214, 469, 972 in Dallas; 682, 817 in Fort Worth; 940 for Denton, Wichita Falls and the NW; 254 for Hillsboro, and south/SW; and 430, 903 in Sherman-Denison, Tyler-Longview, and NE/east). The latest, 737, is being added to 512 in Austin.
When I lived in suburban Dallas in the mid-late 1960s, it was long-distance to call Dallas. Now it's not. There are still some fringe suburbs in north TX that have non-localized prefixes mixed with local/metro ones. Until a few years ago, the phone companies in DFW printed guides and maps in the first part of the phone book to tell you where the prefixes were in each exchange and if any were local calls from other exchanges. Now they can't be bothered, not only to do that guide info, but now you even have to beg them for a phone book since they don't automatically send them to you anymore.
For a time, my mother and I lived with my grandmother. She had local phone company service that didn't come from one of the biggie telcos or baby Bells, and for many years a black rotary phone. You could dial 6-nnnn back then to get someone locally. This company's pay phones were really different. You didn't put your change in before dialing--you put it in after the party answered the phone. And for some reason, you had to give the operator the pay phone number during the process (they apparently had no way of knowing what the pay phone's phone number was).
As for zips, I used to keep up with which local and nearby spots had what zip code. Now I don't since I hardly have to mail anything (the only thing I regularly still mail is my tax return). If I have to do something like a zip search to help someone at work, I look it up on USPS' website.
Semi random, semi-rant area code thoughts.
- To flesh out the original area code deal, the middle number did have to be a 1 or a 0 and the other two could not be. They also designed it so you dialed less. Think about a rotary dial. Roughly the most populated places got the smallest number of clicks, with the smallest (212) going to NYC, followed by 213 for LA, 312 for Chicago, 412 for Pittsburgh, etc. While the longest number of clicks went to the most remote places ending with 902 for Atlantic Canada.
- In my state, where there is really only one area code, the idiots at the state PSC made the phone company make us dial the area code even for local calls, because the do-gooders said poor people would not understand if it was long distance or not if they could call within the area code, but long distance, with 7 numbers. If you are too stupid to know what is long distance, then you are too stupid to have phone. If a couple of long distance call mistakes crashes your budget, you need to have the phone taken out and spend the time you waste on it looking for a better job, or studying to improve your marketability.
- IMHO, we made a mistake back when we did away with the original area code system (eliminating the 0-1 middle system), because now we have so many area codes and overlays and its just going to get worse. If we had just duplicated the middle number (i.e. 201 becomes 2010 in four number system), then used the rest of the numbers (i.e. when out of 2010 numbers, start using 2011, then 2012, etc) you effectivly multiply the number of phone numbers in each area code by 10, and no place yet would be out of numbers.
Some thoughts from across the pond.
Zipcodes - vague and uninformative: our alphanumeric postcodes (just the UK - Ireland has an ancient townland system and the rest of Europe seems to use something like Zipcodes) get detailled fast. The use of letters means that I can work out roughly where the address is just from the postcode's first 1 or 2 letters. Then there's a post office number - these get you basically to a 5-digit zipcode level within 2-to-4 characters. Then round number and a two digit letter code that gets you to a group of addresses, if not one address (though they avoid that for residential dwellings, it seems - which is perhaps a good idea). To post a letter the most you actually need is a house number and a postcode, though people do put addresses on just in case. SatNavs work best when you insert a postcode - sure an address is slightly more accurate, but postcodes are 8 characters at the absolute most and get you to such a fine degree of accuracy there's no point bothering with anything else.
Our phone number system has gone through some changes. Cell phones have 07xxx xxxxxx numbers, rather than geographic 01 and 02 numbers. Areas where there's lots of growth, but didn't have 01x1 or 011x then 7-digit numbers (and London which was 0171/0181 but was growing) have 02x 8-digit numbers. So a London number 0181 811 8181 became 020 8811 8181 (the extra digit being the 8 as it was an outer London number that began with 0181) - but now new numbers are in the 020 3xxx xxxx pattern and then they will move to 020 4xxx xxx when they've run out of those. Southampton and Portsmouth went for 5-digit codes/6-digit numbers to 023 8-digit number - Southampton starting with 023 80xx xxxx and Portsmouth 023 92xx xxxx (I can't recall what the original codes were, but 80 and 92 were linked to them). There's a huge wealth of numbers in these cities now - they haven't used up the third starting digits yet either.
And the codes mean something (normally - newer codes less so):
0121 - Birmingham (2 for B), 0131 - Edinburgh (3 for E), 0141 - Glasgow (4 for G), 0151 - Liverpool (5 for L), 0161 - Manchester (6 for M). 01494 - High Wycombe (49 for HW), etc, etc. There's a big list on wikipedia. In the big cities - London (originally 01 before they split it into 071 and 081, then they added the 1 in the 90s for the whole country for mobiles to get 7, and various fixed-rate numbers to get 05, 08 and 09 numbers, then switched over to the 020 numbers in the late 90s) and the 01x1 numbers - the first two digits of the 7, the Exchange, was typically also some two digit code that fitted the area, though I gather that the latter is also the case in America.
You can do that with US zip codes too if you really wanted to. A number of states are allocated to each first digit; for example 7 is Oklahoma, Texas, Arkansas, and Louisiana. This is because the first three digits refer to the regional processing center the letter is to be sent through. There's a handy list of them on Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ZIP_code_prefixes). All Oklahoma City-area zip codes start with either 730 or 731. Then the last two digits are zones within each processing center's service area. Smaller towns will only have one or may even share with other nearby towns (Goldsby, Washington, and Cole all share 73093) but larger cities usually have multiple codes (Norman has 73069, 73070–which is post office boxes only–, 73071, and 73072). The "plus four" code is often able to narrow it down to one street or even complex of buildings but most of the time it's not used by the populace at large (in fact, I can't even tell you without looking what my plus four code is).
It may not be as easy to remember as the letters that UK postcodes use, but once you see enough of them you can kind of get a feel of roughly where an unusual city is based off its zip code.
Quote from: SP Cook on September 30, 2012, 08:12:24 AM
Semi random, semi-rant area code thoughts.
- To flesh out the original area code deal, the middle number did have to be a 1 or a 0 and the other two could not be. They also designed it so you dialed less. Think about a rotary dial. Roughly the most populated places got the smallest number of clicks, with the smallest (212) going to NYC, followed by 213 for LA, 312 for Chicago, 412 for Pittsburgh, etc. While the longest number of clicks went to the most remote places ending with 902 for Atlantic Canada.
- In my state, where there is really only one area code, the idiots at the state PSC made the phone company make us dial the area code even for local calls, because the do-gooders said poor people would not understand if it was long distance or not if they could call within the area code, but long distance, with 7 numbers. If you are too stupid to know what is long distance, then you are too stupid to have phone. If a couple of long distance call mistakes crashes your budget, you need to have the phone taken out and spend the time you waste on it looking for a better job, or studying to improve your marketability.
- IMHO, we made a mistake back when we did away with the original area code system (eliminating the 0-1 middle system), because now we have so many area codes and overlays and its just going to get worse. If we had just duplicated the middle number (i.e. 201 becomes 2010 in four number system), then used the rest of the numbers (i.e. when out of 2010 numbers, start using 2011, then 2012, etc) you effectivly multiply the number of phone numbers in each area code by 10, and no place yet would be out of numbers.
The original pool of numbers from 1947, long before any customer could dial them, had an additional feature. If the first digit was "0", it was the only area code within a state. If it was "1" then there were multiple area codes. That pattern was broken by the mid-1950s, though obviously if a state still has just one code it has a middle 0. While we think of adding new area codes as a late 20th century phenomenon, they were actually starting to be added by the 1950s.
And finally a piece of trivia. In the first round of area code assignments, Iowa and California had the same number of zones (3).
Quote from: The High Plains Traveler on September 30, 2012, 09:49:12 AM
The original pool of numbers from 1947, long before any customer could dial them,
Actually, they were introduced for the very purpose of bringing in "direct dialing", which was launched November 10, 1951 in parts of New Jersey (where the Bell Labs guys lived). Although it was the late 60s before it rolled out everywhere in the USA, and the mid 70s in Arctic Canada.
Quote
And finally a piece of trivia. In the first round of area code assignments, Iowa and California had the same number of zones (3).
And no southern state (except Texas, which had only 4) had any number of area codes besides one, even Florida and Georgia. More evidence that air conditioning really is the greatest invention of the modern age.
Is the 407 area code of Florida the only area code where you MUST dial the area code even when you are dialing within it? I still see many places outside the 407 that I have visited advertise on their company vehicles 7 digit phone numbers. Then I must assume that 7 digit dialing still exists as we have been having dialing the full 10 digits since the 321 area code was co-signed with 407 back in the late 90s. We in Central Florida have been brainwashed with this, so you automatically assume that all are like us until we see how odd the 7 digit number looks on ads.
Quote from: roadman65 on September 30, 2012, 10:56:28 AM
Is the 407 area code of Florida the only area code where you MUST dial the area code even when you are dialing within it? I still see many places outside the 407 that I have visited advertise on their company vehicles 7 digit phone numbers. Then I must assume that 7 digit dialing still exists as we have been having dialing the full 10 digits since the 321 area code was co-signed with 407 back in the late 90s. We in Central Florida have been brainwashed with this, so you automatically assume that all are like us until we see how odd the 7 digit number looks on ads.
No, the ten-digit dialing is fairly common all over the place. The reason you have to do it in your area is the same reason I have to do it in Northern Virginia–there's an "overlay" area code where two area codes cover the same area rather than having each one further subdivided into smaller and smaller areas. Up here, 703 and 571 cover the same geographic territory. They decided it didn't make sense to split 703 into smaller and smaller areas, so instead we dial ten digits for every call, even if I were to call my next-door neighbor. But in contrast, people in the District of Columbia–which is within our local calling area–only have to dial seven digits when calling another number within DC because 202 is the sole area code for the District (they do have to dial the area code when making a local call to Virginia or Maryland, though).
Your area isn't a complete overlap like our 703 and 571, but there's still an overlap–part of the 407 area code covers the same area as a portion of the 321 area code. So you have to dial the full ten digits.
There are also plenty of places where you don't have to dial ten digits. Most of those tend to be more rural because the lower number of phone numbers in use there means they don't have to split area codes or add overlays.
Quote from: SP Cook on September 30, 2012, 08:12:24 AM
Semi random, semi-rant area code thoughts.
- To flesh out the original area code deal, the middle number did have to be a 1 or a 0 and the other two could not be. They also designed it so you dialed less. Think about a rotary dial. Roughly the most populated places got the smallest number of clicks, with the smallest (212) going to NYC, followed by 213 for LA, 312 for Chicago, 412 for Pittsburgh, etc. While the longest number of clicks went to the most remote places ending with 902 for Atlantic Canada.
Don't forget the "lowest" area code of all - 201 - in North Jersey, home to many of the old (pre-diverstiture) AT&T operations.
Quote from: SP Cook on September 30, 2012, 08:12:24 AM
- In my state, where there is really only one area code, the idiots at the state PSC made the phone company make us dial the area code even for local calls, because the do-gooders said poor people would not understand if it was long distance or not if they could call within the area code, but long distance, with 7 numbers. If you are too stupid to know what is long distance, then you are too stupid to have phone. If a couple of long distance call mistakes crashes your budget, you need to have the phone taken out and spend the time you waste on it looking for a better job, or studying to improve your marketability.
You are in West Virginia, right? Aren't there some parts of the state where a call to an adjoining state is a local call (not that it matters with cell phones, because it usually does not). Examples could include Bluefield, W.Va./Va. and Ridgeley, W.Va./Cumberland, Md.
Quote from: SP Cook on September 30, 2012, 08:12:24 AM
- IMHO, we made a mistake back when we did away with the original area code system (eliminating the 0-1 middle system), because now we have so many area codes and overlays and its just going to get worse. If we had just duplicated the middle number (i.e. 201 becomes 2010 in four number system), then used the rest of the numbers (i.e. when out of 2010 numbers, start using 2011, then 2012, etc) you effectivly multiply the number of phone numbers in each area code by 10, and no place yet would be out of numbers.
That would have been a "neater" solution, wouldn't it? I don't know if the phone system could handle such a change easily, though many (all?) nations in the EU have area codes that are variable-length.
Quote from: cpzilliacus on September 30, 2012, 12:50:06 PM
You are in West Virginia, right? Aren't there some parts of the state where a call to an adjoining state is a local call (not that it matters with cell phones, because it usually does not). Examples could include Bluefield, W.Va./Va. and Ridgeley, W.Va./Cumberland, Md.
Yes, and this is how they acomplished it back before you had to dial an area code. Please don't nitpick me on the numbers, I am working from memory. Let's take Bluefield. Yes, you could (and can) call locally from anyplace in Mercer County, WV to any place in Tazewell County, VA. So Bluefield, WV phone numbers were 325 in the 304 AC. Bluefield, VA phone numbers were 326 in the 703 AC. BUT, there was no 325 phone numbers in the 703 and there was no 326 numbers in the 304. Thus the system knew what you were doing, even if you made an out-of-state, but local, call.
They did this all over. In WV every town up and down the Ohio and along the Potomac was like that, plus Bluefield and Williamson, at least. Obviously this "wasted" a lot of numbers, since a prefix code would be "used" for two area codes. I don't think this was uncommon, I seem to remember that Cincinnati was like that (numbers did not repeat between the 513 and 502 and you could make a local call from Covington to Cincy with only 7 numbers) and I am sure that lots of other places like St. Louis and Memphis and so on were too.
Quote from: Road Hog on September 29, 2012, 09:04:51 AM
But any new numbering plan needs to be settled now, so that new equipment can be manufactured that's ready for the change.
I don't think so. Cell phones don't auto-dial when the phone line detects a full number, and newer landlines don't either. Those phones are going the way of the dinosaur.
Quote from: SP Cook on September 30, 2012, 01:15:12 PM
Quote from: cpzilliacus on September 30, 2012, 12:50:06 PM
You are in West Virginia, right? Aren't there some parts of the state where a call to an adjoining state is a local call (not that it matters with cell phones, because it usually does not). Examples could include Bluefield, W.Va./Va. and Ridgeley, W.Va./Cumberland, Md.
Yes, and this is how they acomplished it back before you had to dial an area code. Please don't nitpick me on the numbers, I am working from memory. Let's take Bluefield. Yes, you could (and can) call locally from anyplace in Mercer County, WV to any place in Tazewell County, VA. So Bluefield, WV phone numbers were 325 in the 304 AC. Bluefield, VA phone numbers were 326 in the 703 AC. BUT, there was no 325 phone numbers in the 703 and there was no 326 numbers in the 304. Thus the system knew what you were doing, even if you made an out-of-state, but local, call.
They did this all over. In WV every town up and down the Ohio and along the Potomac was like that, plus Bluefield and Williamson, at least. Obviously this "wasted" a lot of numbers, since a prefix code would be "used" for two area codes. I don't think this was uncommon, I seem to remember that Cincinnati was like that (numbers did not repeat between the 513 and 502 and you could make a local call from Covington to Cincy with only 7 numbers) and I am sure that lots of other places like St. Louis and Memphis and so on were too.
Same thing with Kansas City MO/KS. You had seven-digit dialing between the 816 and 913 area codes within the Kansas City local calling area. With the number crunch, prefixes had to be assigned within each area code (which are both larger than the KC local calling area) that eliminated the ability for shortcut dialing. You still don't have to dial the '1' prefix for those calls, just the area code and number.
Columbus (614) was going to get an overlay area code several years ago. 10-digit dialing became an option which we were supposed to practice, which I began doing immediately. Then some things happened (like mobile carriers being able to reserve blocks of 1000 instead of 10000) and the need for another area code became less urgent. 10-digit dialing remains optional to this day, though 380 is still reserved for when we need it. I always dial all 10 digits, and I try to make all my contacts in my cell phone stored as 10 digits without a leading 1.
I think I read somewhere that 740, which was split from 614 many years ago, is expected to run out of numbers soon. As far as I know they don't have a new number reserved or a plan (overlay vs geo split).
Quote from: 1995hoo on September 30, 2012, 11:40:25 AM
Up here, 703 and 571 cover the same geographic territory. They decided it didn't make sense to split 703 into smaller and smaller areas, so instead we dial ten digits for every call, even if I were to call my next-door neighbor.
And it was as recent as the early 1970s that 703 was used for
the entire state of Virginia. There's an old rotary phone in my kitchen (from when my grandparents lived here) that has the original number still written on it: 703-526-xxxx. Hampton Roads' 757 area code, which was split from 804 in the early 1990s, is already under discussion to have an overlay.
As a side question, what are the largest cities than no longer have their original area codes?
Quote from: empirestate on September 30, 2012, 07:35:24 PM
As a side question, what are the largest cities than no longer have their original area codes?
San Antonio (210), until about 1992, was in the same area code as Austin. San Diego (619), when area codes were first developed, had the same 213 AC as Los Angeles, then had the same 714 AC as Orange County.
My overlay area code is 442 within the 760 area code shared by north San Diego and west San Bernardino counties, while my zip codes is something of 92203 across from the likes of 92211, 92253 and whatever else (I forgot), since I normally don't write letters in an age of the internet, but it's something you know about wherever you live.
The switching of telephone prefixes to drop the alphabetical lettering as well mail zip codes to have 5-digit ones was meant to make it easy for bureaucracies to handle the traffic and volume of them.
Cities with zips eding at "001" or "-01" are the largest per region when the US postal service installed them in the 1960's in order to forecast or predict the area's future population growth and development, like adding "-02", "-03" and so on.
And the classic 1950s and 60s TV shows when the characters talk of "KLondike-5" or "JaKe-5" interested me in a time of 3-digit prefixes, but before when it was required here to dial "1" then the area code for local phone calls regardless of location.
Quote from: empirestate on September 30, 2012, 07:35:24 PM
As a side question, what are the largest cities than no longer have their original area codes?
NYC (the boroughs of Bronx, Brooklyn, Queens and Staten Island, to be exact)? They all started as '212', but that now only covers Manhattan.
Mike
Quote from: SP Cook on September 30, 2012, 08:12:24 AM
If we had just duplicated the middle number (i.e. 201 becomes 2010 in four number system), then used the rest of the numbers (i.e. when out of 2010 numbers, start using 2011, then 2012, etc) you effectivly multiply the number of phone numbers in each area code by 10, and no place yet would be out of numbers.
This is similar to the current favored proposal for future expansion of the NANP. The current industry recommendation is to turn 555-123-4567 into either 555
0-
0123-4567 or 555
1-
1123-4567.
Quote from: mgk920 on October 01, 2012, 12:51:38 AM
Quote from: empirestate on September 30, 2012, 07:35:24 PM
As a side question, what are the largest cities than no longer have their original area codes?
NYC (the boroughs of Bronx, Brooklyn, Queens and Staten Island, to be exact)? They all started as '212', but that now only covers Manhattan.
Mike
Technically not all of Manhattan, even–the Marble Hill neighborhood is in the 718 area code because it's on the mainland, even though it's part of the borough of Manhattan (this for historic reasons due to the Harlem River having been re-routed).
I recall a Seinfeld episode where Elaine was distraught about getting a phone number with a 646 area code instead of 212. At the time I kind of rolled my eyes, but then in 2001 when I bought my house I suddenly felt the same way when I realized there was a possibility of getting a 571 number instead of a 703 (though ultimately it wasn't a problem and I got my 703 number).
Quote from: kphoger on October 01, 2012, 09:18:31 AM
Quote from: SP Cook on September 30, 2012, 08:12:24 AM
If we had just duplicated the middle number (i.e. 201 becomes 2010 in four number system), then used the rest of the numbers (i.e. when out of 2010 numbers, start using 2011, then 2012, etc) you effectivly multiply the number of phone numbers in each area code by 10, and no place yet would be out of numbers.
This is similar to the current favored proposal for future expansion of the NANP. The current industry recommendation is to turn 555-123-4567 into either 5550-0123-4567 or 5551-1123-4567.
Where did you find that? The information that I've had since the 1990s is for the expansion being done by adding a '9' into a new position 2 in the area code portion of the number ('NPA' becoming 'N9PA'), thus allowing for a transitional dialing period as I posted above.
Mike
Quote from: cpzilliacus on September 30, 2012, 12:50:06 PM
Quote from: SP Cook on September 30, 2012, 08:12:24 AM
Semi random, semi-rant area code thoughts.
- To flesh out the original area code deal, the middle number did have to be a 1 or a 0 and the other two could not be. They also designed it so you dialed less. Think about a rotary dial. Roughly the most populated places got the smallest number of clicks, with the smallest (212) going to NYC, followed by 213 for LA, 312 for Chicago, 412 for Pittsburgh, etc. While the longest number of clicks went to the most remote places ending with 902 for Atlantic Canada.
Don't forget the "lowest" area code of all - 201 - in North Jersey, home to many of the old (pre-diverstiture) AT&T operations.
....
201 isn't really the "lowest" area code in terms of the original scheme. It's numerically the lowest, but don't forget that on a rotary phone the zero is located at the far end of the dial. Dialing "201" is a longer process than dialing "212" or "213" because for the zero you have to rotate the dial all the way around and then it takes ten "pulses" or "clicks" as it rotates back, whereas with the "1" it's a short rotation and a single "click."
Quote from: empirestate on September 30, 2012, 07:35:24 PM
As a side question, what are the largest cities than no longer have their original area codes?
A largeish one is Baltimore, which lost 301 in 1991.
Quote from: mgk920 on October 01, 2012, 10:31:59 AM
Quote from: kphoger on October 01, 2012, 09:18:31 AM
Quote from: SP Cook on September 30, 2012, 08:12:24 AM
If we had just duplicated the middle number (i.e. 201 becomes 2010 in four number system), then used the rest of the numbers (i.e. when out of 2010 numbers, start using 2011, then 2012, etc) you effectivly multiply the number of phone numbers in each area code by 10, and no place yet would be out of numbers.
This is similar to the current favored proposal for future expansion of the NANP. The current industry recommendation is to turn 555-123-4567 into either 5550-0123-4567 or 5551-1123-4567.
Where did you find that? The information that I've had since the 1990s is for the expansion being done by adding a '9' into a new position 2 in the area code portion of the number ('NPA' becoming 'N9PA'), thus allowing for a transitional dialing period as I posted above.
Mike
Sorry, the information I was using was out of date (2001—2003). I thought it was strange, because I also remembered seeing that the current proposal was to insert a 9 into the second position. But, now that I'm looking at sources, what's the date on the proposal to insert the 9? I'm having trouble finding any source at all from later than 2003.
I believe the system I described above does allow permissive dialing as well, because the first digit of an exchange is never a zero or a one.
Quote from: 1995hoo on October 01, 2012, 10:53:38 AM
Quote from: cpzilliacus on September 30, 2012, 12:50:06 PM
Quote from: SP Cook on September 30, 2012, 08:12:24 AM
Semi random, semi-rant area code thoughts.
- To flesh out the original area code deal, the middle number did have to be a 1 or a 0 and the other two could not be. They also designed it so you dialed less. Think about a rotary dial. Roughly the most populated places got the smallest number of clicks, with the smallest (212) going to NYC, followed by 213 for LA, 312 for Chicago, 412 for Pittsburgh, etc. While the longest number of clicks went to the most remote places ending with 902 for Atlantic Canada.
Don't forget the "lowest" area code of all - 201 - in North Jersey, home to many of the old (pre-diverstiture) AT&T operations.
....
201 isn't really the "lowest" area code in terms of the original scheme. It's numerically the lowest, but don't forget that on a rotary phone the zero is located at the far end of the dial. Dialing "201" is a longer process than dialing "212" or "213" because for the zero you have to rotate the dial all the way around and then it takes ten "pulses" or "clicks" as it rotates back, whereas with the "1" it's a short rotation and a single "click."
That's correct. "212" is lowest in that context (since "211" was not available).
Though I have to think that North Jersey got area code "201" thanks to the folks from AT&T being involved.
Quote from: SP Cook on September 30, 2012, 01:15:12 PM
Quote from: cpzilliacus on September 30, 2012, 12:50:06 PM
You are in West Virginia, right? Aren't there some parts of the state where a call to an adjoining state is a local call (not that it matters with cell phones, because it usually does not). Examples could include Bluefield, W.Va./Va. and Ridgeley, W.Va./Cumberland, Md.
Yes, and this is how they acomplished it back before you had to dial an area code. Please don't nitpick me on the numbers, I am working from memory.
Understood. I appreciate your comments and thoughts.
Quote from: SP Cook on September 30, 2012, 01:15:12 PM
Let's take Bluefield. Yes, you could (and can) call locally from anyplace in Mercer County, WV to any place in Tazewell County, VA. So Bluefield, WV phone numbers were 325 in the 304 AC. Bluefield, VA phone numbers were 326 in the 703 AC. BUT, there was no 325 phone numbers in the 703 and there was no 326 numbers in the 304. Thus the system knew what you were doing, even if you made an out-of-state, but local, call.
That was essentially how it worked (on a much larger scale) in metropolitan Washington, D.C. (which for many years, had three area codes). From my home in Silver Spring, Maryland, I could dial numbers in the 202, 301 and 703 area codes, and after the (Baltimore/Eastern Maryland 410 area code was created, many exchanges in the 410 area.
Quote from: SP Cook on September 30, 2012, 01:15:12 PM
They did this all over. In WV every town up and down the Ohio and along the Potomac was like that, plus Bluefield and Williamson, at least. Obviously this "wasted" a lot of numbers, since a prefix code would be "used" for two area codes. I don't think this was uncommon, I seem to remember that Cincinnati was like that (numbers did not repeat between the 513 and 502 and you could make a local call from Covington to Cincy with only 7 numbers) and I am sure that lots of other places like St. Louis and Memphis and so on were too.
I have a
vague memory of calls from Thomas and Davis, W.Va. to Oakland, Md. (in the 301 area code then and now) being local. That was a long time ago, but is quite possibly even true today.
Quote from: Doctor Whom on October 01, 2012, 11:59:12 AM
Quote from: empirestate on September 30, 2012, 07:35:24 PM
As a side question, what are the largest cities than no longer have their original area codes?
A largeish one is Baltimore, which lost 301 in 1991.
San Diego has changed twice, since it was originally part of the 213 area code (one of the three 1947 California originals). Within our memory it was part of 714 and was split off, I would guess, in the 1980s as 619.
Quote from: empirestate on September 30, 2012, 07:35:24 PM
As a side question, what are the largest cities than no longer have their original area codes?
Detroit's satellite cities of Ann Arbor, Flint, Monroe and Port Huron were originally all under the 313 area code when the area codes were first created. Then in late 1993, Flint and Port Huron lost 313 in lieu of the new 810 area code and in late 1997, Ann Arbor and Monroe similarly were placed in the new 734 area code (as was my neighborhood), leaving only Detroit, it's enclaves and some bordering suburbs with the 313 code.
In WV, we have to dial the area code + number for any call, even if its local or not. I have one cell with a 681 area code and another one with the original 304 area code. The reason was that 681 was overlayed on 304, now both area codes cover the entire state
Quote from: SP Cook on September 30, 2012, 08:12:24 AM
..............................While the longest number of clicks went to the most remote places ending with 902 for Atlantic Canada.
Remote?? Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island share 902. The other two Atlantic Provinces have their own: New Brunswick 506 and Newfoundland & Labrador 709**.
And just today a new 782 area code was announced for NS and PEI. There had been talk that the new code would have been applied to one or the other.......but like 902, it will be jointly shared.
http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/nova-scotia/story/2012/10/01/ns-pei-new-area-code-782.html
(**NL split from NB in the early "˜60s and they split from NS/PEI in the '50s)
I note that in the past couple of years, Canada has been eating up more new 'World Zone 1' area code numbers than has the entire USA. This is likely because Canada has not (yet) implemented 1000 number block assignments, giving full 10K blocks to service providers. Has Canada even implemented cross-carrier number portability yet?
Mike
Quote from: brad2971 on September 29, 2012, 11:23:58 AM
Quote from: 6a on September 28, 2012, 04:43:42 PM
I was told by a BellSouth customer service lady that Atlanta has the largest local calling area in the world - you can call a small part of Alabama as a local call. It was weird moving to a place like you describe, where only a couple miles can make the difference.
Both Denver and Phoenix would greatly beg to differ. You can make a call from Longmont to Castle Rock (freeway distance about 60 miles) and it's still local. A call from Buckeye in the far West Valley to Apache Junction in the far East Valley (freeway distance close to 70 miles) is also a local call.
I did find a thing on Wiki to back the nice CSR lady up;
QuoteThe area is the world's largest toll-free calling zone spanning 7,162 square miles (18,549 km2),[11] has three active telephone area codes, and local calling extending into portions of two others. 404, which originally covered all of northern Georgia until 1992, now covers mostly the area inside the Perimeter (Interstate 285). In 1995 the suburbs were put into 770, requiring mandatory ten‑digit dialing even for local calls under FCC rules. This made Atlanta one of the US's first cities to employ ten-digit dialing,[12] which was begun by BellSouth the year before the Centennial 1996 Olympic Games. In 1998, 678 was overlaid onto both of the existing 404 and 770 area codes. Mobile phones, originally only assigned to 404, may now have any local area code regardless of where in the region they were issued. Area code 470, the newest area code, was overlaid with 404 and 770 in the same fashion as 678. The local calling area also includes portions of 706/762 and a small area of 256 in Alabama on the Georgia border.[13]
Although from your descriptions, those other cities aren't far off.
I haven't thought about local vs. long-distance calls in nearly 10 years. are they still relevant?
the only time I think twice before dialing is an international number.
There might be an International Boundary between them.......but there are numerous communities especially in New Brunswick and Quebec that enjoy local calling with their US counterpart across the line:
http://www.localcallingguide.com/saq.php
Quote from: agentsteel53 on October 01, 2012, 06:03:10 PM
I haven't thought about local vs. long-distance calls in nearly 10 years. are they still relevant?
the only time I think twice before dialing is an international number.
I know there is a distinction here, but I rarely call anyone from home these days. The only reason I keep a home phone is crappy cell reception in my area, but it would be nice in my book if they went with the flow and did a nationwide calling thing. It really is rather outdated.
Mentally, I don't think of calling Canada as an international call. They share the same area code system with us and the same country code (+1), after all.
Of course, mentally, I don't really think of Canada as being a foreign country either. It's impossible for someplace that I can drive to in less than six hours to be "foreign".
That said, I haven't a damned clue how one actually makes a phone call to someplace overseas. I've had to dial such a call only once in my life and all I remember is that A) it required pressing a lot of other numbers before dialing the "number" itself, and B) I had to try it a few times before I got it right.
heh, I can be in Mexico in half an hour, but that place remains foreign to me.
Quote from: 1995hoo on October 01, 2012, 09:28:39 AM
Quote from: mgk920 on October 01, 2012, 12:51:38 AM
Quote from: empirestate on September 30, 2012, 07:35:24 PM
As a side question, what are the largest cities than no longer have their original area codes?
NYC (the boroughs of Bronx, Brooklyn, Queens and Staten Island, to be exact)? They all started as '212', but that now only covers Manhattan.
Mike
Technically not all of Manhattan, even–the Marble Hill neighborhood is in the 718 area code because it's on the mainland, even though it's part of the borough of Manhattan (this for historic reasons due to the Harlem River having been re-routed).
Yeah, but since 212 still does exist in NYC I wouldn't count it. The boroughs aren't cities in their own right.
Quote from: 1995hoo on October 01, 2012, 09:28:39 AMI recall a Seinfeld episode where Elaine was distraught about getting a phone number with a 646 area code instead of 212. At the time I kind of rolled my eyes, but then in 2001 when I bought my house I suddenly felt the same way when I realized there was a possibility of getting a 571 number instead of a 703 (though ultimately it wasn't a problem and I got my 703 number).
Indeed, that used to be a big deal. Folks in my line of work used to pay for an answering service so that they'd have a 212 number if they didn't have an in-town address, because being local to Manhattan was seen as a critical qualification. When cell phones became more common, 917 became acceptable as well because it was also NY-centric and showed that you were savvy enough to have mobile connectivity.
Now that cell numbers can be ported across carriers, it has become perfectly fine to have a number with an area code from anywhere in the USA, because so many people still have the cell number from wherever they used to live. The importance of 212 is now a lost vestige of the old days. (It's still important, however, for major companies to have impressive Manhattan addresses, just not so much for individuals.)
Quote from: agentsteel53 on October 01, 2012, 10:07:35 PM
heh, I can be in Mexico in half an hour, but that place remains foreign to me.
Canada itself doesn't feel foreign to me, but Quebec specifically does. Must be the language difference.
Quote from: agentsteel53 on October 01, 2012, 06:03:10 PM
I haven't thought about local vs. long-distance calls in nearly 10 years. are they still relevant?
the only time I think twice before dialing is an international number.
It depends on your home phone service. We used to have to pay long-distance, but then when we got Verizon's fiber-optic service that went away and they don't charge for long-distance. Not everyone has that sort of option, though. (When we had to pay long-distance we used our mobile phones instead for those calls whenever possible.)
Quote from: Duke87 on October 01, 2012, 10:05:03 PM
....
That said, I haven't a damned clue how one actually makes a phone call to someplace overseas. I've had to dial such a call only once in my life and all I remember is that A) it required pressing a lot of other numbers before dialing the "number" itself, and B) I had to try it a few times before I got it right.
In the US, you dial "011" followed by the country code and the applicable phone number (which may include a city code or other region-specific stuff). You'll often see Europeans write phone numbers in a form such as +44 (0) 20 7493 8181 (that's the main phone number for the Ritz London). In the US you dial "011" where the plus sign is. The plus sign is used because different countries use different prefixes. If you were calling internationally from the UK, for example, you would dial "00" instead (example: +1-202-675-6287 means that from the UK you'd dial 00-1-202-675-6287 and you'd reach the Washington Nationals' main number), whereas from Cuba you would dial "119." The plus sign is intended to mean "use the appropriate international access code from your country."
I dial long-distance numbers all day long at work, calling customers about their appointments with the cable guy. One time, the contact number listed was a Saskatchewan number; I wonder if my company got chrarged an international call for that one.
By the way, what's up with the crazy numbers on your caller ID when you get a Skype call? Sometimes they're something like 12553 or something.
Quote from: 1995hoo on October 02, 2012, 01:18:43 PM
+44 (0) 20 7493 8181
what's the significance of the (0)? is that an indicator that there are 10 digits coming up, not 8?
similarly, does 20 work analogously to a US area code, 7493 an exchange, and 8181 the individual phone?
Quote from: agentsteel53 on October 02, 2012, 02:34:54 PM
Quote from: 1995hoo on October 02, 2012, 01:18:43 PM
+44 (0) 20 7493 8181
what's the significance of the (0)? is that an indicator that there are 10 digits coming up, not 8?
similarly, does 20 work analogously to a US area code, 7493 an exchange, and 8181 the individual phone?
I'm not entirely certain this is correct, but I believe the "0" is used there the way we use "1" here, that is as a trunk code to tell the system you're calling long-distance. Apparently it's a British custom to use parentheses to denote a number that some callers will need to use but others will not. So if I were calling the Ritz Hotel from Virginia, I'd dial 011-44-20-7493-8181, but if someone in, say, John o' Groats were calling, he'd dial 0-20-7493-8181.
From what I understand, there is no single answer to your question about the area code and exchange because the area code formats vary around the UK. Some cities, such as London, have a three-digit area code (020) followed by an eight-digit local phone number. But other cities, such as Bristol, have a four-digit area code (0117 for Bristol) followed by a seven-digit local number. But then there are some other places that have either five- or six-digit area codes and four-, five-, or six-digit local numbers. Confusing, isn't it?
Apparently the use of the (0) thing is deprecated but is very common anyway. It's not recommended because it's confusing to people calling from abroad who don't know what it means. So if your phone number is 020 7493 8181 and you need to give that number to someone in another country, the recommended format is +44 20 7493 8181. But a website like the one for the Ritz London, for example, is displaying a number that might be used by people from the UK as well as foreigners, and so apparently that's why this format is ubiquitous. From what I understand they've changed the area code and phone number formats several times over the years, which might explain why they need to clarify it even for domestic callers.
BTW, some mobile phones will let you insert the plus sign when you dial a number. On an iPhone, for example, hold down the "zero" key. If the device is programmed properly it will interpret the plus sign as telling it to insert the appropriate code.
Quote from: agentsteel53 on October 02, 2012, 02:34:54 PMsimilarly, does 20 work analogously to a US area code, 7493 an exchange, and 8181 the individual phone?
020 is the area code, the 7 is just there (upthread I gave a bit of an explaination of this, 7 was central London, 8 was outer London), as it's a big city 493 would have been the exchange (a quick internet hunt and it's HYDe Park), not that we use them anymore, 8181 is the individual phone.
Quote from: 1995hoo on October 02, 2012, 03:02:31 PMI'm not entirely certain this is correct, but I believe the "0" is used there the way we use "1" here, that is as a trunk code to tell the system you're calling long-distance. Apparently it's a British custom to use parentheses to denote a number that some callers will need to use but others will not. So if I were calling the Ritz Hotel from Virginia, I'd dial 011-44-20-7493-8181, but if someone in, say, John o' Groats were calling, he'd dial 0-20-7493-8181.
Sounds correct, but we'd ring 020, not 0-20. And spaces not dashes. Actually, I'd imagine that unless the person in JoG was a pedant, he'd ring 02074 938 181, or 0207 4938 181 (the first as most codes are 5 numbers, and the second as many Londoners still think they have 7-digit numbers, not 8-digit. Southampton people often write their code as 02380, when it's just 023 but the pre-2000 numbers had the code change and the 80 put in front) - not that where you put the spaces matters in the practicalities.
QuoteFrom what I understand, there is no single answer to your question about the area code and exchange because the area code formats vary around the UK. Some cities, such as London, have a three-digit area code (020) followed by an eight-digit local phone number. But other cities, such as Bristol, have a four-digit area code (0117 for Bristol) followed by a seven-digit local number. But then there are some other places that have either five- or six-digit area codes and four-, five-, or six-digit local numbers. Confusing, isn't it?
All have 11 numbers though, and I believe 6 digit codes have been eradicated. Certainly phone books list the '6-digit' codes as 01xxx x.
It's really not very confusing - at least in terms of ringing people, though people do format numbers incorrectly and do things inefficiently (like always using the area code in 02x areas)
QuoteApparently the use of the (0) thing is deprecated but is very common anyway. It's not recommended because it's confusing to people calling from abroad who don't know what it means. So if your phone number is 020 7493 8181 and you need to give that number to someone in another country, the recommended format is +44 20 7493 8181. But a website like the one for the Ritz London, for example, is displaying a number that might be used by people from the UK as well as foreigners, and so apparently that's why this format is ubiquitous. From what I understand they've changed the area code and phone number formats several times over the years, which might explain why they need to clarify it even for domestic callers.
But all 'real numbers', rather than services like operators (counting emergency services 112/999 and IIRC 911 works too in that) begin with 0 - that's not confusing - they always have. We have the 0 in brackets as we struggle to remember +44 is the British international code.
London split in 2 in the 6th of May 1990 (from 01 to 071 and 081) - in part because it was running out of numbers, but mostly about the next change. PhONE day, where landline codes all got a 1 as the second digit happened (and Bristol, etc got their 011x codes) was 16 April 1995 (so London became 0171/0181. On 22 April 2000, 'The Big Number Change' happened - this was and will always be, the last massive change - non-geographic numbers all moved to 07xxx codes (some moved on 28 April 2001), the numbers for fixed local charge rate (ie local everywhere) moved from 0345 to 0845 and the 02x codes started up.
The only change we'll now have is the expansion of the 02 areas - we've done both the messy job of adding an extra digit into codes and the messy job of introducing new codes that didn't match the changed pattern (01xx/01xxx)
QuoteBTW, some mobile phones will let you insert the plus sign when you dial a number. On an iPhone, for example, hold down the "zero" key. If the device is programmed properly it will interpret the plus sign as telling it to insert the appropriate code.
Only some? mine have always had this feature. In fact AFAICT, mobiles in the UK will save any number from an incoming phone as +44 {ten numbers}, rather than have the zero.
A further bit of trivia - in the Republic of Ireland, Northern Irish 028 numbers are 048 numbers.
Quote from: english si on October 02, 2012, 04:48:07 PM
....
QuoteBTW, some mobile phones will let you insert the plus sign when you dial a number. On an iPhone, for example, hold down the "zero" key. If the device is programmed properly it will interpret the plus sign as telling it to insert the appropriate code.
Only some? mine have always had this feature. In fact AFAICT, mobiles in the UK will save any number from an incoming phone as +44 {ten numbers}, rather than have the zero.
I would wager that the VAST majority of Americans would have absolutely no clue what to do if they saw a phone number beginning with the plus sign. Consider that the State Department estimates that only about 30% of Americans even have a passport. An international number written by most Americans is invariably written in the format 011-[country code]-[etc.], such as the 011-44-20-7493-8181 I listed earlier. The "011" is needed to tell the person what to dial because most people wouldn't know otherwise. I think my iPhone is the first one I've had that would insert a plus sign, although frankly I've never paid a lot of attention to it, and most of my calls to the UK were made at the office when I worked in downtown DC and I needed to call our London office (so I just dialed five digits).
BTW, regarding the hyphens, we don't actually dial a hyphen. We just use them when we write the phone numbers: 555-1212 means you dial those seven numbers and the hyphen is there just to break it up to make it easier to read and remember.* So when I inserted the hyphens in that British phone number I wasn't suggesting they're actually dialed, I was just using them to help emphasize which digits the domestic caller would dial as opposed to an international caller. Hence, 0-20 to emphasize the difference from 011-44-20.
*The way the phone number is written is starting to vary more these days too. Traditionally you always saw either 703-555-1212 or (703) 555-1212. Some people use a slash–703/555-1212–but that's never been all that common. Nowadays there seems to be a growing fad to use periods instead: 703.555.1212. I'm not sure where that started. I rather dislike it because I think it makes it look too much like an IP address instead of a phone number. Then of course you have various "vanity" numbers where people write them in other formats either for fun or for marketing reasons. I knew a guy in college who wrote his phone number as 979-HATE (that's 979-4283). I knew another guy who wrote his as 9-SPERM-9 (that's 977-3769).
Quote from: 1995hoo on October 02, 2012, 05:03:03 PM
I would wager that the VAST majority of Americans would have absolutely no clue what to do if they saw a phone number beginning with the plus sign.
even I had not know 100% correctly what it meant. I had thought "+44" was, simply "country code 44", and the + wasn't a mnemonic for "dial a prefix".
then again, I'm used to enough corporate systems, that I figure that sometimes I just have to dial a prefix and that's that. Several European countries have prefix 00, which I learned while borrowing a cell phone to make a call to my US credit card company. ("stop deactivating my card every 6 hours, you callous bastards! I am a valued customer - I pay my bill in full every month ... oh, I get it now.")
Quote from: 1995hoo on October 02, 2012, 05:03:03 PMBTW, regarding the hyphens, we don't actually dial a hyphen.
I know - we would just go "what on earth is this person on?" if someone wrote down their number with hyphens, not spaces.
Your hypothetical man in John O Groats would never ring 020-7493-8181 - he'd ring 020 7493 8181, and no one would break the zero off, other than put it in brackets after a +44 code - while 0-20 is right out, 0 20 is also madness (I know you were highlighting the difference between 0044 20 .... and 020 .... - sorry, using the international dialling code that every country is meant to use, rather than the North America-specific one).
Quote from: agentsteel53 on October 02, 2012, 05:26:42 PMSeveral European countries have prefix 00
All EU countries (and a great many other countries - as it's meant to be the one that is used worldwide) and maybe all of Europe. Finland also has 99 where a different international carrier is used.
Quote from: 1995hoo on October 02, 2012, 05:03:03 PMI would wager that the VAST majority of Americans would have absolutely no clue what to do if they saw a phone number beginning with the plus sign. Consider that the State Department estimates that only about 30% of Americans even have a passport. An international number written by most Americans is invariably written in the format 011-[country code]-[etc.], such as the 011-44-20-7493-8181 I listed earlier. The "011" is needed to tell the person what to dial because most people wouldn't know otherwise.
I am American and I do write US phone numbers for international audiences with the plus sign, e.g. +1 316 943 2023. I don't use "011" plus country code because I don't want the number to be misinterpreted as dialing instructions by someone who has to follow an unusual procedure to place international trunk calls. The plus sign is really a signal that the numbers between it and the next logical delimiter is the country code (1 for North America, 44 for the UK, etc.).
Most people based in Britain who want to give a landline phone number in a format that is friendly for international dialing render it as follows: +44 (0) 1865 511570. In this example, 44 is the country code and (0) means that the 0 which would ordinarily be dialed to reach this number from within the UK is omitted for international calls, while 1865 (01865 within the UK) is for Oxford.
In the UK it is still not uncommon to see phone numbers on business signing and in similar contexts without the second digit 1 introduced in the phONE change English Si describes ("0865 511570" using the example given above).
México is an interesting case in which the dialing pattern is different for calling cell phones than calling land lines.
To call a landline from within México, the dialing pattern is {01 123 456 7890}, where 123 is the area code.
To call a local cell phone from within México it is {044 123 456 7890}.
To call a long-distance cell phone from within México, it is {045 123 456 7890}.
To call a land line from the United States, it is {011 52 123 456 7890}, +52 being the country code.
To call a cell phone from the United States, you have to add a digit: {011 52 1 123 456 7890}.
To futher complicate things, I believe a long-distance cell-to-cell call within México is {01 123 456 7890}.
So, when people write down their phone number, they usually write 123 456 7890 (or 12 34 56 78 90), but if it's a cell phone they'll often write 044 123 456 7890, even though 044 is not actually part of their phone number.
Like when calling the U.K., you drop the leading 0 when you call Germany from the U.S. You dial 011 (international access code), then 49 (country code for Germany), then, say, 69 (city code for Frankfurt), then the rest of the number.
Naturally, when dialing from in country, you would dial 069 for Frankfurt, then the rest of the number.
Big cities in Germany have short city codes and tiny burgs can have as many as 5-digit codes (mostly in the former East Germany). Phone numbers in Germany can be of variable length, with a maximum of 11 digits (including the city code).
City codes in Germany are organized as follows:
(https://www.aaroads.com/forum/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fupload.wikimedia.org%2Fwikipedia%2Fcommons%2Ff%2Ff8%2FTelefonvorwahlbereiche-Deutschland.png&hash=eef240592e8e8035cfb56a4fbd210443cc0cac63)
Calls to Saint Pierre et Miquelon are interesting......they're within North America but you would place it as an international call from Canada or the US: 011 (508) 41 XX-XX
(the islands are so close to the south coast of Newfoundland......in some areas a Canadian (& probably US) cell phone will work just fine on the Bell Aliant Network.......so place the call from your cell the same as you would any place else in North American: 1 + area code)
Quote from: ghYHZ on October 03, 2012, 02:29:03 AM
Calls to Saint Pierre et Miquelon are interesting......they're within North America but you would place it as an international call from Canada or the US: 011 (508) 41 XX-XX
(the islands are so close to the south coast of Newfoundland......in some areas a Canadian (& probably US) cell phone will work just fine on the Bell Aliant Network.......so place the call from your cell the same as you would any place else in North American: 1 + area code)
Do you have to use Euros there, or do they accept Canadian currency?
http://www.st-pierre-et-miquelon.com/english/questions.php <- Euros (which you can get from the ATMs), but most places accept dollars American and Canadian.
And if you cell phone doesn't work ringing a North America number, just add a 00 before the number (as code for North America is 1 anyway...)
Quote from: cpzilliacus on October 03, 2012, 09:08:41 AM
Quote from: ghYHZ on October 03, 2012, 02:29:03 AM
Calls to Saint Pierre et Miquelon are interesting......they're within North America but you would place it as an international call from Canada or the US: 011 (508) 41 XX-XX
(the islands are so close to the south coast of Newfoundland......in some areas a Canadian (& probably US) cell phone will work just fine on the Bell Aliant Network.......so place the call from your cell the same as you would any place else in North American: 1 + area code)
Do you have to use Euros there, or do they accept Canadian currency?
They are a full department of France and yes, they use Euros.
I find that Mexican dialing pattern to be bizarre. In the USA, the numbering authorities and the FCC purposely made it difficult for the public to distinguish between numbering patterns for cell phones and landlines, in order to not unfairly 'discriminate' between the different carrier companies and technologies. They rejected the original proposal for the '630' area code in the Chicagoland area for that reason (it was originally planned to be a wireless-only overlay area code for the entire old '312' area, much like '917' originally was in NYC) and instead it became part of a normal three-way geographic split of the '708' suburbs, the other new area code there becoming '847'. This was in the early to mid 1990s.
Mike
Quote from: mgk920 on October 03, 2012, 12:47:03 PMThey are a full department of France
Nope - they are an overseas collectivity, not an overseas department. It is considered a
collectivité territorial - ie a territory. They govern themselves and don't get votes in the legislature or for the executive branches of the French government.
They also are not in the EU.
Quote from: Road Hog on October 02, 2012, 08:53:11 PM
Like when calling the U.K., you drop the leading 0 when you call Germany from the U.S.
That was what tripped me up. I dialed the zero. I also had to look up that I was supposed to start with 011, as I did not know that.
I suppose it's way too late for it now, but it
really would be helpful if everyone in the world had the same phone number format. The internet got it right: all URLs are the same everywhere!
Now time to discuss an avid fascination with postal zip codes and telephone area codes.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_NANP_area_codes#700
Example of the super-long article enlisted them one by one, but take a shortcut to the 700's and here you find my 760 represents the California Desert and parts of the Inland Empire, Cal. and San Diego area.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_California_area_codes
California has a total of 30-32(?) telephone area codes, the most of any state.
Formerly it was 213 since the area code system started after WWII (1945) when long distance calling service was perfected, then it was part of 714 (Orange County, San Diego and Riverside/San Bernardino) in the 1960s and 70s and 619 (for San Diego) in the mid 1980s to mid 1990s. In around 1990, the Riverside area got 909 and around 2000, it got 951 while 909 still is for the San Bernardino area.
760 is the largest area code in the contiguous US, while 907 of Alaska is the true largest and 780 for Canada covers the sparsely populated Arctic region (Yukon, Northwest Territories and Nunavut).
Wait, 406 is the largest in the contiguous US.