"Donald E. Kimberlin" <0004133373@mcimail.com> (05/19/91)
There's been quite a thread going on here about assignment of phone numbers in the 9000 range. Recently, Bill Huttig <wah@zach.fit. edu> posts in Digest v11,iss366: > My aunt's phone number is 813-xxx-9xxx and her number is fairly new. > It is serviced by GTE of Florida. All through the era of the step switch, the "higher" one's number, the more (statistically and sometimes empirically) likely it was to get an error in connecting to that number. The simple reason: It's more difficult to get the rotary step switch to accurately jump up to its highest levels, 9000, and even 0000. When the technology was that simple and easily controlled, the Bell leaders of our monopoly era, in the interest of quality (which was also then known to be self-interest in corporate reputation), set as their own norm that numbers in the 9000 and even 0000 range would not be used for the public. They did assign numbers in the 9000 range for their own use, understanding it would economize of number use for their prime customers (the public) and simultaneously make for a simple way for any employee to know the call was to an "official" number ... including the monopoly-era coin phone. While the scheme was known in a general way, as usual, there was considerable variation within the local companies about how it was used. Thus, in many areas, 9960 (later nxx-9960) was the Business Office, while in others, it would be a test tone. In yet others, some other 9000 series number would be used for either function. AT&T's practice of using numbers like 9927 for the "toll testboard" pretty consistently still sticks in a lot of places, where LEC's still proliferate that number for their "test desk." Again, there was no solid national norm; it's just a tendency, and the range of variation is wide. Non-Bell LEC's are less likely to follow even that simple "rule." 0000 was even more "unwanted," and many step offices weren't even "equipped" (so far as the business office was concerned) to use those numbers. Somehow, they couldn't ever see that while they wouldn't assign you one on request, they were stuck in the middle of non-sequential hunt groups! (In all fairness, they were aliases in many hunt schemes.) In 1966, crossbar was already in fair deployment, and I learned of a cute "trick" a Southern Bell foreman used in his own office: He assigned 0000 to his home phone. It was unique; a lot of people (like telemarketers) wouldn't think it was real and wouldn't call him. Two years later, I was up in NYC, living in New Jersey. I requested of NJ Bell that my new phone (in a crossbar office) be assigned 0000. I was made to write a letter requesting it; I was grilled by phone a half-dozen times about why I wanted it, and told that using such a number would be a disservice to myself. I got the "old stories" about the step switches and how many of them "weren't equipped." Finally, I got told (NOBODY would write a letter answering my letter) that 0000 was "reserved for plant test purposes." Today, two decades later, I dial it occasionally to see if it ever got used. It's still unassigned. I wonder what neat "test" they have in mind for 0000? Returning to 9000 numbers and coin phones, the operators were all told when given a 9000 number, to "check for coin." This meant to call an operator in the distant city, and ask a local operator to look it up in the local directory. Because they could not tell from the calling end if the called party put coins in the phone (and they never did set up a means to get assistance colelcting coins from the called city), the "policy" was to not permit collect calls to coin phones. (New Yorkers may recall that Imus in the Morning had a favorite trick of embarrassing NY Telephone by making collect calls to a coin phone in Cleveland. He'd run up the entire hierarchy of NY Telephone between records of a morning, trying to get a call to his freezing buddy said to be waiting in a phone booth along Lake Erie.) Even though operator turnover is gigantic, I'd venture that Bill Huttig's aunt will have incidents in which collect calls to her 9xxx number are refused. Old ways die hard, especially when today's minions of the network don't even understand WHY it once had to be that way! Moderator's Note: To place a collect call to a payphone, the operator called 'inward' in the distant city and asked for assistance in collecting the coins. The distant 'inward' would call the pay phone, and if the call was accepted would collect the money, then notify the originating operator to extend the call. PAT]