smb@research.att.com (11/10/88)
A few years ago, when they split New York City into 212 and 718, there was a lot of fuss. The city even found a consultant who was willing to testify that N.Y. Telephone should have gone to 8-digit numbers instead... [You would think these people would read, if nothing else, the front few pages of their telephone directory which in almost every case says quite plainly that the subscriber has *NO* property rights in their telephone number, and that the number can be changed by the telephone company at any time in the conduct of the Company's business. Patrick Townson]
roy@phri (Roy Smith) (11/16/88)
> A few years ago, when they split New York City into 212 and 718, there > was a lot of fuss. Not only did people sue to try and prevent the split, but they sued because it wasn't fast enough! I think the cut-over day was supposed to be Jan 1st. Not surprisingly, it took a few days to get everything cut over properly. Some business people in Brooklyn (718) sued NY Telephone because they were promised that the cut would be on Jan 1 and it wasn't! I don't remember if anything ever came of the suit; I assume it was thrown out of court because by the time anything could have been done, the job was long over. It's not like these people were being denied phone service; calls to 212 still went through. Even today, several years after the split, I still get "please dial 718 before your number" recordings when I forget to do so. BFD. -- Roy Smith, System Administrator Public Health Research Institute {allegra,philabs,cmcl2,rutgers}!phri!roy -or- phri!roy@uunet.uu.net "The connector is the network"
cmoore@BRL.MIL (VLD/VMB) (11/22/88)
Many digests ago, I had a note in about a song lament which included "when we were 212"! I also heard of some uproar that outsiders might not recognize a 718-area number as being a "New York City number". As has been said earlier, phone co. reserves the right to change phone numbers (this includes area code, right?) if required in the course of its operations, and it's only by courtesy that they give some advance notice to businesses in the affected areas. The need to minimize such adverse impact does cause a conservative approach: "Don't change if you don't have to"; for example, if an area code is split, the local 7-digit number is not changed (although this was bent in some cases to avoid splitting some towns along the 213/818 border in California; I don't know specific cases there).