cmoore@brl.mil (VLD/VMB) (03/17/90)
Response I sent to Jeff Wolfe <JTW106@psuvm.psu.edu>: Where are you that you dial 1+7D for a town less than 7 miles from home, but have 7D for a town 20 miles from home? My residence phone in Newark, Del. has lopsided local calling. I can call (local) all of New Castle County except for the little fringe next door to Smyrna at Kent County line, and also 2 exchanges in southern Chester County, Pa. But Maryland, maybe only 2 or 3 miles away to the west (and the next-door exchange in that direction), is 11-digit long distance (inter-LATA).
JTW106@psuvm.psu.edu (Jeff Wolfe) (03/18/90)
I live in Dalton, Pennsylvania. A case in point: Dalton, Pa. (where I live) our prefix is 563 Lake Winloa, Pa. (7 miles from my house) Prefix is 378 Dunmore, Pa. (where I attend Penn State) Prefix is 961 I don't know why the boundaries are like this, but they are. Jeff Ps. Our Tele Co is Commenwealth Telephone.
Jeff Wolfe <JTW106@psuvm.psu.edu> (03/19/90)
Somehow, my original post was truncated. Here is the fixed version:
I live in Dalton, Pa. a town serviced by Commenweath Telephone Co. I
have a few friends in the town of Lake Winola, Pa. 7 driving miles
from my house. To call them, I must dial 1-378-xxxx. But, to call Penn
State's Scranton Campus, where I attend school, I can simply dial
961-xxxx. Since Lake Winola is serviced by Commenwealth, and the PSU
Scranton campus (and the rest of Scranton/Dunmore) is served by Bell
Of Pa. I am at a loss to explain why the boundrys are the way they
are. A call to Commenwealth's Customer service did not help, as the
person I chatted with had no idea how the boundrys were laid down.
Is this a standard occurance? Or am I just lucky?
Jeff Wolfe
JTW106@psuvm.psu.edu RelayNet node: Outer
JTW106@psuvm.BITNET BBS (717)563-1279 HSTpodop10@bingvaxu.cc.binghamton.edu (Peter Fleszar) (03/20/90)
Well, in upstate NY calling areas are roughly congruent with county lines. The county seat (which in my examples is the same as the market center of the county; perhaps a systematic bias) can call all, or nearly all, of the smaller towns within the county, but often not other towns inside the same radius but not within the county. The smaller towns can call the next town inside the county and the county seat, but often not adjacent towns inside or (especially) outside the county. I'll illustrate this by discussing my home area of Cortland (Cortland) and Tompkins (Ithaca) counties; and add without further proof that this system seems to hold for Cayuga (Auburn), Onondaga (Syracuse), and Broome (Binghamton) counties. CORTLAND County seat: Cortland - (607) 749, 753, 756 - NYTel Can call (within county): Cincinnatus (607) 863, Truxton (607) 842, Marathon (607) 849, Virgil (607) 835 - Contel; McGraw (607) 836 - NYTel. Can call (town just outside county, but exchange includes significant area within county) DeRuyter (315) 852, Dryden (607) 844 - Contel; Tully (315) 696 - NYTel. Can call (entirely outside county, but town much closer to Cortland than to its own county seat): Sempronius (315) 496, McLean (607) 838, Groton (607) 898 - NYTel. (Note that these are served by the same local loop provider as Cortland.) Example town: Marathon, south of Cortland (exchange area includes a small rural corner of Broome county) - Contel Can call: Cortland (607) 749, 753, 756, [adjacent within county] McGraw (607) 836 - NYTel; [adjacent within county] Cincinnatus (607) 863 - Contel. Can NOT call the other adjacent exchanges: Dryden (Tompkins county) (607) 844, Richford (Tioga county) (607) 657, Whitney Point (Broome county) (607) 692. TOMPKINS County seat: Ithaca - (607) 253, 254, 255, [256 - disused], 257, 272, 273, 274, 277 - NYTel Can call (all within county): (607) 387 Trumansburg - Trumansburg Home Telephone Co.; Etna (607) 347, Dryden (607) 844, Slaterville Springs (607) [don't recall] - Contel; Lansing (607) 533, Newfield (607) 564, McLean (607) 838, Groton (607) 898 - NYTel. Can't call elsewhere locally. Example: Groton, 15 mi. from Ithaca and 10 mi. from Cortland, all inside Tompkins county as far as I know. Can call (within county) Ithaca (607) 2xx, McLean (607) 838. These are NYTel, as is Groton. Can call (outside county) Cortland (607) 7xx - NYTel. Can NOT call (adjacent within county) Etna (607) 347, Dryden (607) 844 - Contel; Lansing (607) 533 - NYTel. Can NOT call (adjacent outside county) Sempronius (315) 496, Moravia (607) 497 - NYTel. So, I guess this all means that 1) the county seat exchange can call within the county and some very nearby areas outside within its market area; 2) rural exchanges can call the county seat, the market center, and maybe one or two other towns close by, but not outside the county. Hope this helps someone. I'd like it if someone who *knows* would post some hard stuff to end the discussion (yea, right :) ). Peter Fleszar BITnet PODOP10@BINGVAXA Internet podop10@bingvaxu.cc.binghamton.edu Compu$... 72000,1471 Ham Radio KB2CCL Phone +1 607 798-8769 Mail-home PO Box 32, McLean, NY 13102 USA.
David Tamkin <dattier@chinet.chi.il.us> (03/20/90)
Jeff Wolfe wrote in TELECOM Digest, Volume 10, Issue 182: | I live in Dalton, Pa. a town serviced by Commenweath Telephone Co. I | have a few friends in the town of Lake Winola, Pa. 7 driving miles | from my house. To call them, I must dial 1-378-xxxx. But, to call Penn | State's Scranton Campus, where I attend school, I can simply dial | 961-xxxx. What's significant are not so much the boundaries of your seven-digit dialing area so much as those of your toll-free area. If I were placing calls from Dalton, whether there were toll charges would be more important to me than whether I had to dial eight digits or seven. Where the moderator lives and where my parents live, there are a lot of places to which one must dial eleven digits but the calls are untimed and also a lot of places to which one must dial seven digits but the calls carry a per-minute toll. Given a choice of which of a company's locations to call, I'll take more button-pushing with less cost over dialing fewer digits but paying higher charges any day. Do you also have untimed (perhaps even unlimited) service to Scranton but have to pay by the minute for a call to Lake Winola, or is it the other way around? David Tamkin PO Box 813 Rosemont IL 60018-0813 708-518-6769 312-693-0591 dattier@chinet.chi.il.us BIX: dattier GEnie: D.W.TAMKIN CIS: 73720,1570
JTW106@psuvm.psu.edu (Jeff Wolfe) (03/21/90)
In article <5374@accuvax.nwu.edu>, dattier@chinet.chi.il.us (David Tamkin) says: >Jeff Wolfe wrote in TELECOM Digest, Volume 10, Issue 182: >| from my house. To call them, I must dial 1-378-xxxx. But, to call Penn >| State's Scranton Campus, where I attend school, I can simply dial >| 961-xxxx. >What's significant are not so much the boundaries of your seven-digit >dialing area so much as those of your toll-free area. If I were >placing calls from Dalton, whether there were toll charges would be >more important to me than whether I had to dial eight digits or seven. I guess I should have specified that any number with a '1' in front is automatically a toll call in our area (except calls to the telco itself). I am indeed charged by the minute to call Lake Winola. My Scranton service is untimed and unlimited. The 'local toll' (I'm not up on teleco terms) rates are more expensive than AT&T's long distance rates.. I would gladly dial 50 digits if I didn't have to pay for a call that only went 7 miles! -- Jeff Wolfe JTW106@psuvm.psu.edu RelayNet node: Outer JTW106@psuvm.BITNET BBS (717)563-1279 HST