hwt@uunet.uu.net> (08/14/90)
In article <10830@accuvax.nwu.edu> daveb@comspec.uucp (dave berman) writes: >It seems to me that the whole worldwide voice net will go down the >tubes real soon now, with features like IdentaCall and stuff all >working to help use up all those numbers so fast. Are the telephone >switching systems installed now able to handle a reprogramming, such >as adding an extra digit in front of the usual exchange? Or adding a >fourth character to the area code? There's going to be a new North American Numbering Plan. The existing plan has approximately 160 NPAs (area codes/Numbering Plan Areas) with about 640 office prefixes and 10000 lines per office. That totals to just about one billion (1,024,000,000) lines. The reason we're running out, perversely enough, is not the dense area codes, but the sparse ones. Montana, for example, with a whole NPA to itself. The new NPA will impose everywhere what is already a fact of life in dense area - no 1 + seven digit toll calls. Then the area codes can be used as office prefixes, and (the real change) all office prefixes - now 800 - can be used as area codes. So the total capacity goes to 800 x 800 x 10000 or 6.4 billion. Disclaimer: I'm sure the numbers aren't right, it's five years since I looked at this stuff. Henry Troup - BNR owns but does not share my opinions | 21 years in Canada... uunet!bnrgate!hwt%bwdlh490 HWT@BNR.CA 613-765-2337 | [Moderator's Note: Another good example is little Rhode Island. All of an area code for what? ... a couple hundred thousand phones at most? PAT]
Carl Moore (VLD/VMB) <cmoore@brl.mil> (08/16/90)
Isn't Delaware even smaller, telephone-wise, than Rhode Island? (Rhode Island does have the smaller land area.) [Moderator's Note: Probably. Then there is Our Nation's (Drug and Murder) Capitol, which gets a whole code for itself, and as the earlier message points out, Alaska, Nevada and other states with an entire, mostly unused area code. PAT]
rnewman@uunet.uu.net> (08/17/90)
> [Moderator's Note: Another good example is little Rhode Island. All of > an area code for what? ... a couple hundred thousand phones at most? PAT] You'd be surprised, but the 1980 census shows 947,154 people living in Rhode Island. That's more than the District of Columbia and at least ten states, including Alaska, New Hampshire, Nevada, and Delaware. Ron Newman