woody <djcl@contact.uucp> (01/16/90)
covert@covert.enet.dec.com (John R. Covert 10-Jan-1990 0822) writes: > Unlike countries where most telephone service is provided by either > ancient step-by-step or modern electronic offices, the North American > Integrated Numbering Plan Area (U.S., Canada, and the 809 Caribbean) > is chock full of central offices of an intermediate type. These > common control offices store the number dialled, the _entire_ number, > in what is known as an Originating Register. This is a hardware > register made out of relays, and it has the capability of storing > three, seven, or ten digits, plus a flag indicating whether "1" or "0" > was dialled first. How then would overseas numbers work? I believe the international standard for those would be 12 digits or so, including country code (after dialing the 01 or 011), at least the cutoff in dialing after the 011 here is 12 digits. Also, what about the 10XXX+ dialing for other carriers in the U.S.; would these intermediate switches not have the 10XXX+ dialing at all? Actually, it might get hard to remember local numbers if they were more than 7 digits (this might be the reason for the length of tel. #s in North America). Perhaps 4 digit area codes might be used instead (take an old Mexico code like 706, and use a 4th digit to make something like (7064) 555-0000). Of course, the country code could always be split (11 for Canada, 12 for eastern U.S., and California seems to be its own country :->). That gets to be a bit much, though. || David Leibold "That's not reality, but that, too, is news" || djcl@contact.uucp