GUMBY@MC.LCS.MIT.EDU (David Vinayak Wallace) (03/05/86)
In several countries they are in the process of changing the number of digits in a phone number -- from four to five, five to six, or six to seven. Since we're running out of area codes, I started to wonder how much it would cost to make telephone numbers eight digits long. For ease of changeover assume a flag day on which everyone has, say, a zero appended to their current phone number. How much would it cost the phone companies and how much would it cost everybody to change their COBOL programs? any guesses?
sirbu@GAUSS.ECE.CMU.EDU (Marvin Sirbu) (03/10/86)
The US does not have any plans to increase the number of digits in a phone number from seven to eight anytime soon. After all, ten digits for area codes and numbers is in theory ten billion telephones. What is going to happen -- in about 1995 -- is that we are going to run out of area codes if we can only use numbers of the form "N 0/1 N". The current planning therefore, is that the restriction on area codes to "N 0/1 N" will be lifted in about 1995. This will necessitate MANDATORY 1+ dialing for long distance calls, because it will no longer be possible to differentiate area codes from exchange codes by looking at the second digit. All those COBOL programs out there that do edit checks on the area code to restrict it to "N 0/1 N" will have to be changed, but -- thank heaven -- you won't have to change all the record sizes for eight digit phone numbers.