David E A Wilson <david@cs.uow.edu.au> (04/09/91)
From the {Sydney Morning Herald} (Column 8), April 8:
The other morning, about 4 o'clock, Philippa Holly, of Oatley,
was woken by the phone. The caller, in Spain, was trying to get a
company in Minneapolis, Minnesota. After persuading the caller that
Oatley wasn't in Minnesota, she went back to bed, but five minutes
later he came on for the same number. Philippa has since found out
that the area code for Minneapolis is 612 - the caller had omitted the
1 for the United States, so 61 got him Australia, the 2 the Sydney
area, and the rest the Oatley number.
Column 8 can report having been continually called by someone
in Boulogne trying to dial a number in Manchester, whose code on the
British system is 61. As always with this sort of wrong number, the
calls came in the dead of night. Are there any other area codes, when
wrongly dialed, start bells ringing out here?
(Then in the same column on April 9):
There are more possibilities of mis-dialed calls coming to
Australia than we thought. Australia's international code is 61, and a
2 after that puts the caller into the Sydney network. There are,
according to Paul Gray, of Woollahra, 235 places in the US with area
codes starting with 61, including all Minnesota starting with 612. Tom
Hubbard, of Girraween, lists Basle, Benghazi, Brasilia, Ljubljana
(Yugoslavia), Ottawa, Patrai (Greece), Posnan (Poland), Windhoek
(Namibia), Limerick and Madan (Indonesia), as well as Manchester, as
having local codes starting with 61.
David Wilson Dept Comp Sci, Uni of Wollongong david@cs.uow.edu.au
[Moderator's Note: I think the columnist meant to say 'there are 235
places in the world with area codes starting with 61' ... there
certainly are not that many area codes in the USA like that. Even so,
is his comment correct? ... I've not counted them all to see. PAT]
Bob Frankston <Bob_Frankston%Slate_Corporation@mcimail.com> (04/09/91)
I've had the reverse experience of explaining to a secretary that 617 (without an international prefix) was Massachusetts and not Australia. In this case it was a FAX and I call transferred the call to a nearby FAX machine. The problem is compounded by calls placed by automatic dialers, forwards and all sorts of means that do not allow for a reality check by a human caller. Has CCITT given any consideration to a sparser dialing space (or a check digit) or some means that would decrease the probability that a wrong (as opposed to invalid) number would be treated as valid?