leichter@lrw.com (Jerry Leichter) (06/25/90)
Something in TELECOM Digest recently reminded me of a question I had many years ago to which I never got a satisfactory answer. About 15-20 years ago, my parent's CO in Queens, NY was upgraded - or perhaps they were just moved to a new CO. We had two lines at the time, both in the "AXtel-1" exchange. Both were moved to the "380" exchange, where they remain to this day. Now the oddity: The suffixes on both lines were changed ever so slightly - in one case, the last digit changed from "0" to "1"; in the other, the last digit changed from (as I recall) "7" to "5". Can anyone come up with a plausible reason for such a change? The only explanation I've been able to come up with was that there was a massive reorganization of exchanges; AXtel-1 was split and parts recombined with other exchanges into "380". Someone in one of the other exchanges had our old suffixes and won out for the right to keep them. While this explains the observed facts, I find it hard to believe, especially as I've heard of no other cases anything like this since then --- and growth in the telephone system has certainly been much more rapid recently than in the early '70's. Jerry