Carl Moore (VLD/VMB) <cmoore@brl.mil> (08/31/90)
schwartz@aiag.enet.dec.com writes that a call from 212 to 516 is local. But I had a message from roy@alanine.phri.nyu.edu saying that the call in question was going about 20 or 30 miles beyond Cold Spring Harbor. Back in the 1970s (I don't know what has changed in the meantime), the message-unit calling area from NYC went as far east as the Amityville, Cold Spring Harbor, and Farmingdale exchanges, which are somewhere around the Nassau-Suffolk border. Fisher's Island, NY: It's served by 516-788, and is more easily reached reached from Connecticut than it is from the rest of N.Y.state. It is toll from other parts of area 516 (and of course this would make it a toll call from NYC). Calls to Fisher's Island are apparently routed thru Connecticut, according to info I read from a 1982 tape (also, Fisher's Island has a Connecticut zipcode 06390, which long ago replaced 11943; and at least one church lumps it in with a Connecticut, not a N.Y. state, diocese).
cowan@marob.masa.com (John Cowan) (09/05/90)
In article <11591@accuvax.nwu.edu> cmoore@brl.mil (VLD/VMB) writes: >schwartz@aiag.enet.dec.com writes that a call from 212 to 516 is >local. But I had a message from roy@alanine.phri.nyu.edu saying that >the call in question was going about 20 or 30 miles beyond Cold Spring >Harbor. Back in the 1970s (I don't know what has changed in the >meantime), the message-unit calling area from NYC went as far east as >the Amityville, Cold Spring Harbor, and Farmingdale exchanges, which >are somewhere around the Nassau-Suffolk border. This is no longer true. I don't know exactly when New York Telephone cut over, but as of now the entire New York Metropolitan LATA is a message-unit calling area. Within the NYMLATA, there are no longer individually billed toll calls. NYTel divides the area into seven regions (I forget the official jargon for these): within each, calls are one message unit each irrespective of length*; between regions, calls are timed. The region boundaries are political in nature and independent of area code, thus New York City is one region but two area codes (212/718), whereas Nassau and Suffolk Counties are one region each but share area code 516. * There is a service option whereby all calls, even within the region, are timed: this option has lower per-month fixed charges. cowan@marob.masa.com (aka ...!hombre!marob!cowan)