dattier@jolnet.orpk.il.us (David W. Tamkin) (10/27/89)
Bob Goudreau wrote in Digest Volume 9, Issue 473, about area code 919: | It isn't an obvious split (like, say, 617/508) since 919's two largest | urban areas (Raleigh/Durham and Greensboro/Winston-Salem) have roughly | the same population but are about 80 miles apart. If one urban area | has to get assigned to the new NPA, which one is it? The alternative | would be to leave *both* of them in 919, thus potentially making both | 919 and the new NPA exceedingly contorted, perhaps like 619 in California. Or like 409 in Texas, which completely circumscribes the part that kept 713? "Same population" means comparable numbers of residences. Here in northeastern Illinois, more prefixes are switching to 708 than remaining in 312, and more population will be switching to 708 than staying in 312. Even though the prefixes remaining in 312 tend to be fuller, there are more actual telephone lines going to 708. The key, I think, is not Illinois Bell's fable that "area code 312 is historically associated with the city of Chicago" but that once the 312/708 boundaries were drawn, there were more business customers on the city side than on the suburban sides. It is a greater annoyance for a business to get an involuntary telephone number change than for a residence. Compare the backlash against changing the name of a sidestreet to that against changing the name of a commercial thoroughfare. (The result here is not very good: a large majority of the prefixes and of the growth potential are on the same side of the line [indicating that the line should have been drawn differently], and moreover that side that is getting the new code.) The choices in North Carolina are either to draw a small area encompassing the larger cities a la Houston and let the surrounding band get the new code, or to separate the two metropolitan clusters and assign the new code to the side of the line with fewer business customers. David W. Tamkin dattier@jolnet.orpk.il.us {attctc,netsys}!jolnet!dattier P. O. Box 813 Rosemont, Illinois 60018-0813 (708) 518-6769 (312) 693-0591