goldstein@delni.DEC.COM (Fred R. Goldstein dtn226-7388) (06/06/88)
Can we please stop clogging the newsgroup with recollections of individual
exchange names? I guess I didn't mind the rather comprehensive,
several-columns-wide list of a whole city's exchanges, but to read
a screen or two of headers and footers for one or two is too much,
and frankly I think we've had enough. Unless it's really interesting
or of historic note, the fact that 763 used to be SMEgma-3 in East
Overshoe is really not what a lot of us read the net for!
So much for curmudgeonliness this Monday morning. With regard to
Greg Monti's question about prefix assignment, no, it's not like NPA
assignment.
Bellcore assigns NPAs when a telco requests one. But each state or NPA
has one lead telco who owns its prefices. Old NPAs were based on names,
not dial-pulls. Later NPAs, especially in the boonies, were based on
what combinations of digits required the least step-by-step hardware to
route correctly. For example, if a town had 4-digit dialing with all
numbers beginning with "4" or "6", then you could be pretty sure no other
local CO prefix began with 4 or 6. (I.e., 980-4000 could call 980-4111
by dialing 4111. OF course, such towns usually reserved 41xx for
information!)
Smaller telcos ask the lead telco for a prefix when they need one.
Art Brothers' Beehive Tel in Utah (he's a columnist for Telephone
Engineering & Management as well as the industry's lead curmudgeon,
running a tiny telco in the desert) asked for a new prefix for new
territory. They had to ask Mountain Bell; there is no love lost
between the two. So Mt. Bell gave him "234". Sounds good, no?
Well, there were LOTS of uncompleted call arrivals. Turns out
234 is a VERY BAD prefix since kids playing with phones like to
dial 12345678! And most of the non-calls went to 234-5678.
fred