rnewman@uunet.uu.net (Ron Newman) (12/25/90)
How did it come to be that the prefixes 976 and 950 were already
available in every area code when the corresponding services
("extra-cost information services" and "alternate long-distance
carrier access numbers") were introduced?
Or were there some area codes where these exchanges were already in
use, and some unlucky subscribers were forced to change their
telephone numbers?
As far as I can see, 950 and 976 are perfectly ordinary looking NXX's.
Since the purposes that these exchanges now serve were in no way
anticipated when the North American Numbering Plan was first
introduced, how did they come to be "reserved" for such use?
(Even in the days of letter prefixes, I don't see how the phone
company could have always avoided assigning WRigley-6 or
WRightwood-6...)
Ron Newman
[Moderator's Note: '950' was never used prior to being adopted for the
OCC's. I think you will find it was only in the last few years that
the digit zero appeared *anywhere* in the prefix. Prefixes were
constructed (2 -> 9) (2 -> 9) (1 -> 9). Zeros began showing up a few
years ago in the third position, but even then zeros in the second
position were absolutely verbotin. Generally 976 was idle also because
of an aversion to long dial pulls. They had WABash, WEAther,
WANnamaker and a few others -- maybe even WRigley, although I never
heard of it. We also had WEbster 9 and WENtworth here, but generally
the nines were not all that crowded. Prefixes with short dial pulls
were more in vogue in the days when rotary dial was all we had. Some
customers thought long dial pulls were fashionable and prestigous,
thus the large number of business places and hotels which have been
around with the same phone number for six or seven decades with
suffixes ending in thousand or a high hundreds number. But generally
speaking the majority of prefixes were clustered in the low hundreds,
i.e. 221 through 575, etc. Apparently words combining the letters
/ABC/ /DEF/ and /GHI/ were easier to come by also. Since for a long
time prefixes were the first three letters of a word followed by four
digits this also tended to leave the /WXY/ and /PRS/ spots sort of
sparse. PAT]