dattier@jolnet.orpk.il.us (David Tamkin) (03/28/89)
[Moderator's Note: This is a letter I received from David Tamkin, a fellow Chicagoan. We were discussing other things, and got into a discussion about the odd-ball prefixes here which straddle the city/suburban boundary lines. I asked David where they would be placed: 708 or 312. Here is his reply. PT] Patrick: I already knew about those numbers. I'd spoken to a live operator on one of them, who admitted, when I brought up the mess in the Newcastle CO, that it wouldn't really be possible to make it through without changing any phone numbers. (Had IBT not gotten sloppy they could have.) The following twelve prefixes are, per the recording, to "be served by both area code 312 and area code 708:" 200 340 411 555 611 796 911 950 958 959 970 976 These thirty-seven prefixes are invalid. I imagine that 414 and 219 (which match area codes in the LATA) and 217, 309, 312, 618, 708, and 805 (matching area codes in Illinois) will remain invalid: 203 211 212 217 219 270 290 300 309 311 312 313 319 320 370 400 414 415 494 500 511 600 610 616 618 700 708 710 711 800 809 811 813 815 900 912 999 494 I'll get back to below. All the dedicated mobile prefixes I knew of are, per the recording, to remain in 312. So are the dedicated FX prefixes such as BRoadway 3, BIshop 2, and 569. The ten prefixes serving the city from suburban CO's: 229 380 399 58(LUdlow)6 589 62(NAtional)5 693 694 714 992 will remain in 312. The prefixes serving the suburbs from city CO's [well, only one city CO, now that 494 has been dissolved: 45(GLadstone)7, 64(NIles)7, and 86(UNderhill)7] will be switched to 708, meaning that 708 will cover three discontiguous geographical areas. UNderhill 7 has always been listed in the Chicago directories (and the Jefferson Park local) and handled from the same city business office as Chicago's parts of the Newcastle CO district, so that will likely change when it goes into area code 708: Harwood Heights listings will appear in the River Grove local and Near West Suburban regional books instead and be served from the west suburban business office. (The other two holes in the city are no problem: one is a small plot of land with no phones, belonging to the state and condemned for highway purposes. The other is filled by Mt. Greenwood Cemetery, where mail is addressed "Blue Island, Illinois" but which has a city phone number.) Unincorporated Norwood Park Township will be a mess. If it had been up to me, I'd have kept Elmwood Park, Harwood Heights, Norridge, and River Grove in 312 so that 708 could be in one piece and there would be only one boundary line, but it wasn't up to me. UNPT is laid out like this: Sections 1 and 12 have 867 prefixes, section 11 has 457 prefixes, and section 2 has a mosaic of suburban Park Ridge prefixes (692, 698, 823, 825, and maybe a 696 or two, but no 318's or 518's) and Chicago-service Park Ridge prefixes (380, 399, 693, and 714). You see, up until 1976 Centel treated it as suburbia and assigned suburban prefixes, charged at suburban rates; then, since it had been surrounded by Chicago for fifteen years, they started assigning Chicago numbers charged at Chicago rates but didn't make anyone who was already there change numbers. If the rest of UNPT were to have stayed in 312, Centel could have gone on as they have and eventually the remaining suburban phone numbers would have been replaced with Chicago numbers as people sold their homes or changed their numbers, but since the IBT parts of UNPT are going to 708 it's a whole new story. IBT was cleaning up its act in the Newcastle area but just assigned a 775- prefix to a new store in Harwood Heights (Cosmetic Center in Holiday Plaza). I wish I had a way to the ear of someone who'll listen. Do you think that a discontiguous NPA is a bad idea? I know I do, and I'm sure that people in Harwood Heights, Norridge, and UNPT have a lot more telephone conversations with Chicago locations than they do with locations in suburbs that are outside the perimeter of the city. Heck, that's probably true of Elmwood Park as well, if not also River Grove! Now, about what you were saying regarding the Cicero-Chicago border: I'm not sure if you were talking about 24(BIshop)2 or 494. Each is a separate story. BIshop 2 is a dedicated Foreign Exchange prefix, used solely to provide city numbers to west suburban businesses. Until 1987 it was located in the Cicero CO, but then it was moved to Chicago-Austin. However, it is part of the Chicago-Lafayette exchange and Chicago Zone 6 for when a call is charged by exchanges or zones (such as calls from coin phones or from Centel service) rather than by CO's. It will remain in 312. 494 was in the Chicago-Lawndale CO. It was part of the Cicero exchange. I couldn't figure out where it served, and every number I tried dialing on that prefix got an intercept that the number was not in service or that the number had been disconnected with no further information available. The recorded service for the area code change says 494 is an invalid prefix now; if I try to dial 494-XXXX, the call is intercepted after only three digits. It's been dissolved. And I think IBT are once again out of their minds. 494 was the only suburban prefix that was within an A call of Lake Shore, Illinois Dearborn, or Superior (Franklin, Wabash, and the Canals are in the A zone from the Cicero CO's three exchanges and ten prefixes; Lakeview is in the A zone from Oak Park, Evanston, and Skokie). They could have offered lower rates for a 708-494- number to downtown locations than for any other 708 prefix and accordingly had much more of such traffic in Remote Call Forwarding from business customers who won't pop for full-fledged Foreign Exchange service, but they blew it by having it dissolved. If I were in charge of this, I'd be aggressively promoting the 494 prefix for Remote Call Forwarding, telling downtown businesses that they don't have to make their suburban customers feel alienated by needing to dial eleven digits. David