msb@sq.sq.com (Mark Brader) (09/28/89)
I asked a friend from New Zealand, and he confirms that the term STD (Subscriber Trunk Dialing) is used there. And he further notes that "area codes" are called "STD codes" whether the subscriber is actually placing the call or not. He also notes that I was wrong to remember radio station 3BZ in Christchurch; it's actually 3ZB. (Formally, ZL3ZB, it seems.) He said that digits 1-4 are used for different parts of the country, but there was once a station 5ZB, which broadcast from a railway car! And *I* note that when I was there in 1983, on one occasion I found myself placing a call from a hand-cranked phone, and on another occasion there occurred the following conversation between my friend and an operator. (I've posted this to Telecom before but perhaps it's worth repeating.) "I'd like to make a transferred-charge call to Milford Sound. Please charge it to Spencerville 269." "Spencerville 269, and you're calling Milford Sound 6." "How did you know??!" "It's the only telephone in Milford Sound." "!" "Except for the box outside the post office, and I didn't think you'd be calling that." It should be noted that he could have direct-dialed, um pardon me, placed an STD call, if he had not wanted to transfer the charge. By the way, local calls from a payphone were then 6 cents... the only coin slots on the phones being 2 and 10 cents. Fun country. The backward dial numbering has already been noted. Mark Brader "Any company large enough to have a research lab SoftQuad Inc., Toronto is large enough not to listen to it." utzoo!sq!msb, msb@sq.com -- Alan Kay