johnl@esegue.segue.boston.ma.us (John R. Levine) (10/27/89)
In article <telecom-v09i0473m07@vector.dallas.tx.us> goudreau@rtp48.dg.com (Bob Goudreau) writes: >Does anyone out there know why "011" was chosen as the international >access code here in the North American Numbering Plan? If it were up >to me, I'd probably pick "11" instead [analogous to 00 in most of Europe.] It seems to me that misdialing 11-number for 1-number is a very likely sort of dialing mistake, either because your finger bounces, or if you have a rotary dial some random click on the line sounds like a 1. Using 11 for international would mean lots of mistaken non-revenue international calls. (Recent messages have reported how even with the current scheme people have dialed Australia instead of Minneapolis when numbers start with 612.) Besides, there are probably still places where you don't have to dial 1 before long distance, and in places like that they usually ignore any leading 1 digits. If I were Bellcore I'd permanently reserve 11 as an error. On the other hand 011 is pretty hard to dial deliberately and nearly impossible to dial by mistake. Regards, John Levine, johnl@esegue.segue.boston.ma.us, {spdcc|ima|lotus}!esegue!johnl