"John R. Levine" <johnl@esegue.segue.boston.ma.us> (05/24/90)
While watching the rain at my beach house in New Jersey last weekend,
I did a little phone number experimentation.
Readers may recall that New Jersey is one of the few places to have a
strict implementation of NANP dialing, e.g. seven digits with no area
code or else 1+10 digits, completely independent of whether the number
called is local, toll, inter- or intra-lata. In has to be, since the
201 area and its soon to be split 908 area have many NXX prefixes, and
even though 609 has no NXX, some of the NXX prefixes in 201 are
dialable from 609 as seven-digit local calls.
I was surprised to discover that any number that I could dial as seven
digits, I could also dial as 1-609-NNX-XXXX. This included local,
intra-lata, and inter-lata calls. (My beach house is in one of the
smallest latas in the country, consting of the small and not very
populous strip of the 609 NPA along the coast.)
Since New Jersey is now almost entirely ESS except perhaps for some of
the independent telcos in the northwest part of the state, I expect
that this sort of dialing should work most places in the state.
Regards,
John Levine, johnl@esegue.segue.boston.ma.us, {spdcc|ima|lotus}!esegue!johnlMark Brader <msb@sq.com> (05/24/90)
> Dan Jacobson had introduced the subject by stating how annoying it was > to have to reprogram his telephone's memory locations when he crossed > an area code boundary ... Isaac Rabinovitch had commented that the > telephone should be intelligent enough to do this for him ... > I submitted a question to the Digest about two months ago, asking what > possible cause there could be to forbid eleven-digit local dialing ... Implementation issues aside, there is a simple reason to forbid it, one which has certainly been mentioned in this forum in the past. Certainly it is not that strong a reason, but in the traditional environment where people were NOT carrying telephones with memories all over the place, it was the most relevant one. If I dial 1-416-759-0000, it is rejected because that is not the way to dial the local number 759-0000, and *therefore I must have misdialed*. Perhaps I really wanted 1-415-759-0000, say; San Francisco instead of Toronto. So why bother the poor wretch who has that number in Toronto? In the old days when "leading 1 means long distance" applied here, this argument was even stronger, as this would also apply if I dialed 1-416-759-0000 from, say, Hamilton, within area 416 but not a local call. Now, however, we have to dial an area code on all long distance calls, and 1-416-759-0000 is the way to dial Toronto's 759-0000 from Hamilton. (I know that 759 exists in Toronto and San Francisco. I don't know if 759-0000 exists and I'd rather you did not dial it to find out!) Mark Brader, SoftQuad Inc., Toronto, utzoo!sq!msb, msb@sq.com "Have you ever heard [my honesty] questioned?" "I never even heard it mentioned." -- Every Day's a Holiday
Dave Levenson <dave%westmark@uunet.uu.net> (05/26/90)
In article <8230@accuvax.nwu.edu>, johnl@esegue.segue.boston.ma.us (John R. Levine) writes: [in Jew Jersey]: > I was surprised to discover that any number that I could dial as seven > digits, I could also dial as 1-609-NNX-XXXX. This included local, > intra-lata, and inter-lata calls. (My beach house is in one of the > smallest latas in the country, consting of the small and not very > populous strip of the 609 NPA along the coast.) I have noticed that I can use the home area code everywhere I've tried it in New Jersey. This includes a half-dozen central offices in the North Jersey LATA (201 and 908). Dave Levenson Voice: 201 647 0900 Fax: 201 647 6857 Westmark, Inc. UUCP: {uunet | rutgers | att}!westmark!dave Warren, NJ, USA AT&T Mail: !westmark!dave [The Man in the Mooney]
0004261818@mcimail.com (David Tamkin) (05/26/90)
In volume 10, issue 382, Mark Brader offered one reason that eleven- digit local dialing is forbidden where it isn't required: |Implementation issues aside, Political implementation or engineering implementation? |there is a simple reason to forbid it, one which has certainly been |mentioned in this forum in the past. Mr. Brader's explanation boiled down to this: Mother is as positive as ever that she knows what is best for us better than we know ourselves, and if we dial any sequence we don't *have* to, it can't be that we have our reasons for doing something we thought of on our own. No, we helplessly stupid customers must have made a mistake, so she's going to protect us from ourselves by forbidding whatever she doesn't require. That way we're relieved of thinking. How nice of her. That way she's relieved of admitting that we can think. How nice for her. It's another case of "We don't let you suspend Call Waiting any more because people who did were missing important calls." |Certainly it is not that strong a reason, but in the traditional |environment where people were NOT carrying telephones with memories |{nor laptop computers --DWT} all over the place, it was the most |relevant one. The traditional environment where Mother knows all and customers know nothing, that is. I'm not taking it out on Mr. Brader and don't want this to sound as if I were; I'm peed at the telco attitude. Near my home a frontier between two telco satrapies repeatedly abuts, crosses, adjoins, tickles, body-slams, splatters, and generally abuses the three borderlines between 708 and 312. Living here, I know the boundaries very well, but most people who pass through do not and often tend to guess wrong about which town they're in. The area here is infested with COCOTs, particularly in the Illinois Bell portions. Many of them have no telephone numbers on their faces; those that do often have only seven digits or still read "312" even though they are now in 708. Most Illinois Bell pay phones have just a sticker to put "708" over "312" (and you cannot tell one that really is in 312 from one in 708 whose sticker fell off unless you know the exact boundaries or know which prefixes are which) and their instruction cards speak generically of "this area code" and "other area codes." (During the grace period I saw a 708 sticker on a payphone in what was to remain in 312. The owner of the business told me that someone from Illinois Bell had come in, told him his location would be in 708, and put the sticker onto the coin phone; I suggested he check with Illinois Bell again before changing his stationery.) As for COCOTs, forget about any clarity in dialing instructions. Most of them have no instruction cards at all or silly generic ones that equate "local calls" with seven-digit dialing and "long-distance calls" with eleven-digit dialing. And of course, God forbid that a COCOT should bear its own number so that you know which area code you're dialing from if you don't have the boundary line memorized. So when you want to place a call from an unlabeled pay phone that is, let's say, in 312, to another number in 312, but you think you are in 708 and dial 1312 in front, you can't get through (and COCOTs probably don't tell you what went wrong nor return your money). There's no reason for that. It makes no sense whatever. Centel-owned coin phones are very clear about it: their instruction cards state "You are dialing from area code 312" or "You are dialing from area code 708." They still don't let you dial eleven digits within your own NPA if you wish, but there is less reason to try. David Tamkin P. O. Box 7002 Des Plaines IL 60018-7002 +1 708 518 6769 MCI Mail: 426-1818 CIS: 73720,1570 GEnie: D.W.TAMKIN +1 312 693 0591
dan@sics.se (Dan Sahlin) (05/26/90)
In Stockholm I just found out that it now is possible to dial the local
area code even for a local call. They must have changed that fairly
recently. Last week when I was in Dalecarlia (in the countryside) I could
not dial the local area code. I do hope they will make it possible there
too, as Sweden has about 200 different area codes, and if you are
travelling around it is almost impossible to know in which area code you
are.
Being successful on using the local area code, I tried to use the
county code too. It worked! I do hope I'm charged as a local call
anyway. Are there more places in the world where you may make a local
call using the country number?
We are getting closer and closer to the ultimate goal: The number you
dial only depends on the phone you are dialing to, and not on the
phone you are dialing from. Unfortunately Sweden uses "009" as the
international prefix, but I understand that it will be changed into
"00" within about five years.
All Stockholm numbers (08 area) starting with 4 or 5 seem to be
possible to dial with an additional leading 6. So my home number may
now alternatively be dialled as "430120" or as "00946-86430120"!
/Dan Sahlin email: dan@sics.sedanj1@ihlpa.att.com (Daniel Jacobson) (05/27/90)
msb@sq.com (Mark Brader) writes:
:If I dial 1-416-759-0000, it is rejected because that is not the way
:to dial the local number 759-0000, and *therefore I must have
:misdialed*. Perhaps I really wanted 1-415-759-0000, say; San
:Francisco instead of Toronto. So why bother the poor wretch who has
:that number in Toronto?
Hmmm, it is protecting you from misdialing one out of the 150+ North
American areacodes ... but you might have dialed 412, 413, 414, etc.
when intending for 415. So there's only one poor wretch out of 150
that will be spared being woken up by fumble-fingers via this
"feature".
Dan_Jacobson@ATT.COM +1-708-979-6364djcl@contact.uucp (woody) (05/28/90)
I found a report of someone in 416 being able to dial 416 + local
number and getting the local number (no 1+ in front, though). This was
after the cutover in March to allow for NXX prefixes.
|| djcl@contact.uucp // David Leiboldcoleman@cs.ucla.edu (Michael Coleman) (05/29/90)
I visited Kansas City over the weekend and discovered an annoying
quirk in the local phone system.
I was trying to dial a number in Kansas (area code 913) from Missouri
(816). The number was about 30 miles off, but is considered "local"
in the sense that one just dials seven digits.
Having been out of the area for a while, I dialed the normal 11 digits
that one would dial in Los Angeles (for example) to do the same thing.
The bizarre thing was that although I was calling from a residence, I
got connected to a recording stating something along the lines of
"This number cannot be dialed directly from a pay phone..."
I called the operator, who gave a more helpful error message ("I think
I know what's wrong...")
Mike
try. %% "When at first you
try :- try. %% don't succeed, ..." (coleman@cs.ucla.edu)David Tamkin <0004261818@mcimail.com> (05/31/90)
David Leibold wrote in volume 10, issue 391: |I found a report of someone in 416 being able to dial 416 + local number |and getting the local number (no 1+ in front, though). This was after |the cutover in March to allow for NXX prefixes. Hmm. Was that on a call that normally requires 1-416-NXX-XXXX or on one that normally requires dialing seven digits? Central Telephone, through some overlooked bit of code, allows customers in 312 to dial anywhere in area code 815, inter-LATA or intra-LATA, with ten digits. [A large part of area code 815 is in the Chicago LATA. If the ten-digit call is to a prefix outside the Chicago LATA, Centel passes the call to the dialer's primary long- distance carrier.] That won't work for calls to area code 708 (which is nearer than 815) or to other places in 312, though. Centel customer service personnel have, in the last couple weeks, become very familiar with the two bugs in their billing software that have been hitting me since the 312/708 split (well, one of them was cured March 12). My mentions of them have been greeted with "oh yes" as I start to describe the problems instead of "really?" after I've finished. The programmers are working on a fix, they tell me. I'll believe it when the fix is working on my bills. David Tamkin P. O. Box 7002 Des Plaines IL 60018-7002 +1 708 518 6769 MCI Mail: 426-1818 CIS: 73720,1570 GEnie: D.W.TAMKIN +1 312 693 0591
deej@bellcore.bellcore.com (David Lewis) (05/31/90)
In article <8184@accuvax.nwu.edu>, 0004261818@mcimail.com (David Tamkin) writes: [various introductory comments omitted] > That is all the more reason that eleven-digit dialing should always be > permitted, even when it is not required and seven or eight or ten > digits would do. Dialing 1-NPA-NXX-XXXX within the NANP is totally > unambiguous and doesn't require a time-out, so there really is no > justification that I can see for rejecting it. According to _Notes on the BOC Intra-LATA Networks -- 1986_, TR-NPL-000275, Issue 1, April 1986 (the most recent version of _Notes_), 1+NPA-NXX-XXXX is either a "Permissive procedure. May be permitted in addition to recommended procedure" or a "Recommended procedure" for all types of calls. This includes locations with or without non-common control switching systems (e.g.SXS); local-direct dialed, toll-direct dialed, Home NPA, Foreign NPA, with or without interchangeable CO codes. Go figure. It's that "may" that leaves room for interpretation. Disclaimer: The fact that I work for Bellcore affects the content of this posting only in that it means that I have a copy of _Notes_ sitting on my bookshelves. _Notes_ Copyright C. American Telephone and Telegraph, Inc., 1980, 1983; Copyright C. Bell Communications Research, Inc., 1986. All rights reserved. David G Lewis ...!bellcore!nvuxr!deej (@ Bellcore Navesink Research & Engineering Center) "If this is paradise, I wish I had a lawnmower."