From telecom-request@delta.eecs.nwu.edu Tue Aug 22 17:49:24 1995 by 1995 17:49:24 -0400 telecomlist-outbound; Tue, 22 Aug 1995 14:21:20 -0500 1995 14:21:13 -0500 To: telecom@eecs.nwu.edu TELECOM Digest Tue, 22 Aug 95 14:21:00 CDT Volume 15 : Issue 352 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson New Newsletter on 800,900 Numbers: inTELigence (Judith Oppenheimer) Area Code Crisis -- A Different Viewpoint (Fritz Whittington) Re: Seven Digits Across NPA Lines (Bob Goudreau) Re: Seven Digits Across NPA Lines (Wes Leatherock) Re: Seven Digits Across NPA Lines (James E. Bellaire) Re: Seven Digits Across NPA Lines (Patrick L. Humphrey) Re: Seven Digits Across NPA Lines (Carl Moore) Re: Shanghai to Raise Telephone Numbers to Eight Digits (Sam Spens Clason) Re: Shanghai to Raise Telephone Numbers to Eight Digits (Michael Jennings) TELECOM Digest is an electronic journal devoted mostly but not exclusively to telecommunications topics. It is circulated anywhere there is email, in addition to various telecom forums on a variety of public service systems and networks including Compuserve and America On Line. It is also gatewayed to Usenet where it appears as the moderated newsgroup 'comp.dcom.telecom'. Subscriptions are available to qualified organizations and individual readers. Write and tell us how you qualify: * telecom-request@eecs.nwu.edu * The Digest is edited, published and compilation-copyrighted by Patrick Townson of Skokie, Illinois USA. You can reach us by postal mail, fax or phone at: 9457-D Niles Center Road Skokie, IL USA 60076 Phone: 500-677-1616 Fax: 708-329-0572 ** Article submission address only: telecom@eecs.nwu.edu ** Our archives are located at lcs.mit.edu and are available by using anonymous ftp. The archives can also be accessed using our email information service. 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A suggested donation of twenty dollars per year per reader is considered appropriate. See our address above. All opinions expressed herein are deemed to be those of the author. Any organizations listed are for identification purposes only and messages should not be considered any official expression by the organization. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Newsletter Separates Fact From Fiction For Users Of 800, 900 Telephone Services New York, NY -- The alleged exhaustion of available 800 telephone numbers and proposed new rules on how the system is to be administrated has spawned a newsletter to keep users of 800 and 900 exchanges up-to-date. inTELigence, published by Interactive CallBrand, tracks actions being considered by the rule-making bodies involved as well as proposals from the telephone service providers. "We separate fact from rumor," said Judith Oppenheimer, president of Interactive CallBrand. "The newsletter tracks the regulators and the service providers and compares their claims with what's actually going on in the marketplace. That way we can advise users about what proposals they may want to make to the rule-making bodies." Several months ago regulators became concerned about the dwindling supply of 800 numbers and they predicted the current supply could be exhausted by February, 1996. The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) and other bodies are reviewing how to allocate the current supply of numbers and is overseeing the addition of a new 888 toll-free exchange which is supposed to be ready for use in March, 1996. "The next few months will be critical and proposed rules will be changing from week to week. Our clients needed some way to keep up and that's why we started inTELigence," Oppenheimer said. Interactive CallBrand and its clients are concerned that doubling the toll-free database will cause quality of service to be compromised. A decline in service could mean slower phone service for customers who have come to depend upon the 800 and 900 systems. inTELigence will also be monitoring plans by service providers to educate the public about the new 888 service and changes in the telephone system that may be needed to accommodate it. These issues are critically important not only to the technical people who will have to implement the new system, but also to marketers who need 800 and 900 services for customer sales and who want access to the new 888 exchange. Subscription information is available by calling ICB at 212-684-7210. For More Information Contact: Judith Oppenheimer, 212-684-7210 Judith Oppenheimer, President Interactive CallBrand(TM): Strategic Leadership, Competitive Intelligence Producer@pipeline.com. Ph: +1 800 The Expert. Fax: +1 212 684- 2714. Interactive CallBrand is a leading source of information and support on 800 and related issues, representing user positions before the FCC, State Department, Int'l. Telecommunications Union, and domestic industry forums. ------------------------------ There is an extremely interesting document available at: http://www.open.gov.uk/oftel/oftelwww/oftcons.htm which explains how the UK intends to handle the area-code and number shortage problems, in a very flexible and user-friendly way. Makes me wonder why we couldn't do it the same way (I know, North America is a lot bigger and has more people, but the scheme is scaleable). It also (horrors!) asks for *feedback* and *comments* on the various proposals. But we know it would never work here -- the opening statement is: "*TELEPHONE NUMBERS BELONG* to people and businesses and they need to be treated as a national resource. OFTEL took over responsibility for the UK Numbering Scheme from BT in 1994. This means that OFTEL now makes plans for the future use of numbers and allocates numbers to telephone companies to allow them to provide service to their customers. To help us make the right decisions, we are committed to consulting all those with an interest - residential customers, business users and the telecommunications industry." (Emphasis mine.) And other heresies like: "When you call a person with the same area code, you usually dial only their local number -- this is known as local dialing. But you can dial the full national number if you prefer. Your call will be connected and the charge is the same either way." Fritz Whittington Texas Instruments, P.O. Box 655474, MS 446 Dallas, TX 75265 Shipping address: 13510 North Central Expressway, MS 446 Dallas, TX 75243 fritz@ti.com Office: +1 214 995 0397 FAX: +1 214 995 6194 [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: You're right! It would never, never do here in the USA, where we have the only really correct way of doing these things. I should have censored your message entirely rather than risk allowing these heresies to become known to telecom admins here. PAT] ------------------------------ Carl Moore writes: >> Inter-NPA 7D dialing is the exception, not the rule, even in >> rural areas. > It refers only to LOCAL calls to other area codes. Of course. And I repeat: 11D (or 10D) dialing for such calls seems far more prevalent than 7D. Bob Goudreau Data General Corporation goudreau@dg-rtp.dg.com 62 Alexander Drive +1 919 248 6231 Research Triangle Park, NC 27709, USA ------------------------------ bellaire@tk.com (James E. Bellaire) wrote: > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: There really is no reason to ever go to > eleven digits as in 1+anything. The reason is that when we get to the > point that all calls must be dialed as AC + seven digits, we will no > longer need the initial '1' as a flag. Right now it serves as a flag > to indicate that an area code is following rather than a prefix. When > we get to where we always begin with an area code, then switches can > be modified to always expect ten digits and always expect the first > three to be an area code. PAT] I believe there is another reason for this, Pat. The leading "1" identifies the call as a call for which a charge is made. In Southwestern Bell territory, at least, originally the leading "1" was not required. A great many calls to the business office were generated by people making 7D calls to numbers which were interzone or toll. They had no indication that the calls were chargeable. It eventually became apparent that a large number of customers were not comfortable with the fact they could not tell from the way they had to dial the call whether the call was toll or not. (Note that virtually all service in Southwestern Bell territory was, and is, flat rate.) So the driving force in adopting "1+" in Southwestern Bell territory, at least, was the demand from customers and the number of calls that had to be written off. Those in this newsgroup tend to feel that everyone is, or should be, as knowledgable as they are about communications matters. The great majority of customers are not, and furthermore they don't want to be and don't see why they should be forced to be. And in the long run they will vote if that's what is required to make telephone service convenient for them. It is, perhaps, one of the penalties that has to be paid for the telephone's becoming such an integrated part of the fabric of life in the U.S.A. that the great body of the public thinks it is theirs and should be operated for their benefit. Even in a corporate environment, it is very hard to educate the users about how to use the telephone service. Most of them don't know; they may learn how to use a few features that are advantageous to them. I have been a part of such education efforts. JEB> Q. Why should users be forced to use area codes when dialing across JEB> NPA boundries? JEB> A. They are not. Suprised? In many rural areas users can dial across JEB> NPA and state lines with 7 digits. The only time 10 or 11 digits JEB> are used is in major metropolitan areas. There are some cases where this is true, but they tend to be special situations. One of the most notable cases is the Kansas City metropolitan area (certainly not a rural area) where cross-NPA and cross-state line (they are the same thing there) are indeed 7D for local calls. But this is limited to calls within the Kansas City metropolitan exchange. If you call outside the flat rate area, you have to use 1 + NPA + 7D. Note that when cross-NPA 7D dialing is used, the NXX has to be "protected" in the other NPA. So the number of available NXXs is reduced by the number of NNXs that can be dialed 7D across the boundary. So I imagine the days of that arrangement in metropolitan Kansas City are numbered. In the Dallas-Fort Worth metropolitan area, that time has already arrived. Local calls in the same area code are dialed as 7D. Local calls across the NPA boundary are dialed as AC+7D (10 digits). Chargeable calls to any point, whether within the same area code or not, are dialed as 1+AC+7D (11 digits). JEB> In residential areas an overlay could be perfomed by allowing 7 digit JEB> dialing to all exchanges within the community, and 11 digit dialing to JEB> zone dialing or LD locations. That way neighbors could call each JEB> other using 7 digit dialing. Since in cities of any size the percentage of intra-wire center calls is quite low, this wouldn't be of any great benefit. And wire center boundaries don't usually follow "residential area" or "community" boundaries anyway. JEB> Business areas would not be able to do this because of their high use JEB> of NXXs, but the problems are their creation and a split would be JEB> worse. (See previous messages about stationary and advertising costs JEB> associated with a split.) Since almost all "areas" (wire center areas? metropolitan exchanges? what kind of area?) are a mix of residential and business, and served from the same COs, it's hard to see how, or why, this distinction could be made or implemented. As to stationary and advertising costs, these occur whenever a wire center boundary is changed, when a business relocates or gets a centrex or other types of inward dialing arrangements. And if the business expects to ever get a call from outside its own narrow area, it's going to need to show its area code anyway. Most businesses are fairly small, with a few lines at most (many have only one). But unless it's the local barber shop, most of them expect someone will call them long distance at some time and will want to show their area code anyway. (Even the local barber shop may expect to get calls from vendors outside the local area, and not just unsolicited sales calls, either; businesses need vendors to supply their needs.) Wes Leatherock wes.leatherock@hotelcal.com wes.leatherock@f2001.n147.z1.fidonet.org [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Wait a minute. We went through this several years ago here about the meaning and purpose of 'one'. The One True Religion says that 'one' indicates the three digits following consitute an area code. I had thought that all those heretics who kept insisting that 'one' meant 'the call you are now dialing has a toll charge involved' had long since been excommunicated from this Digest and that those who then persisted in their heresy had been beheaded. ... Now here you are back to pester me again! ... Even if we assume there is some validity in the 'one = toll' argument -- and it probably was valid a number of years ago when area codes did not change with every street corner and back yard neighbor's fence -- there is not a lot of consistency there now. One does not equal toll for large segments of customers in 312/708 who are near each other. There are many many cases now where inter-areacode dialing is purely local. I'll grant you in more rural and lesser populated areas of the USA -- let us take Wyoming, or Montana as examples -- you still have to go the entire state before you change area codes and toll generated from seven digit dialing is pretty common. But do they dial 1 plus seven digits in that case, in order to catch the attention of the originator of the call? I would think they would do that if alerting the caller to the existence of toll was the reason for the leading one. PAT] ------------------------------ I, bellaire@tk.com (James E. Bellaire) wrote: >> Q. Why should users be forced to use area codes when dialing across NPA >> boundries [sic]? >> A. They are not. Suprised? In many rural areas users can dial across >> NPA and state lines with 7 digits. The only time 10 or 11 digits are used >> is in major metropolitan areas. goudreau@dg-rtp.dg.com (Bob Goudreau) replied: > This latter statement is certainly false. Inter-NPA 7D dialing is the > exception, not the rule, even in rural areas. In *most* area where you may dial local across an NPA boundry you dial 7D. 'The rule' in *most* rural areas is 'if it is local, it is 7D' regardless of NPA. The exception is in *metropolitan* areas where you dial 10D or 11D to cross NPAs. Check the boundry lines between NPAs in 'rural' areas, such as the=20 Michigan/Indiana border, where South Bend, IN, can call Niles, MI, and Elkhart, IN, can call Union and Edwardsburg, MI. Along every NPA border there are several rural communities who can dial across the line 7D. Look at Indiana --- 317-564 Delphi to 219-652 Burrows / 219-686 Camden / 219-859 Deer Creek / 219-943 Idaville / 219-965 Yeoman (and back); 317-981 LaFontaine to 219-563/568/569 Wabash (and back); 317-964 Union City to 513-968 Union City, OH (as expected); ·_ 317-732 West College Corner to 513-523/529/798 College Corner, OH and 513-796 Morning Sun, OH; ALL of these offer 7D local across NPA borders. The only 1+ NPA requirement I have seen in all of Indiana is from East Chicago, Hammond, and Whiting, Indiana who can call Calumet City, Illinois, locally by dialing 1+708. Where there is a cross NPA local call in rural areas you are *most likely* to find 7D dialing. The exception is 10D or 11D. Inter-NPA 7D dialing is the rule, especially in rural areas. In other news cogorno@netcom.com (Steve Cogorno) added: > While I don't disagree that overlays are a good idea, it will take > some consumer education. I don't like the idea of an overlay for > landline phones though, because I don't want to have to remember what > area code my friend has (seven digits to remeber is enough for me :-). It > would be easier to put all wireless services into an overlay, then > tell customers XXX is for wireless. All NEW services in the overlay, regardless of use. Most would be cellular/ paging/PBX uses since that is where most of the growth is. 1+NPA would always be allowed and suggested as the 'norm' with 7D being allowed for local calls (all exchanges at your CO plus a few close neighbors). Nobody should ever have to change their phone number unless they move. That would include wireless services. Every time a cell operator has to move their NXX from one NPA to another they must get every customer to bring in their phone to change the MIN. The same NXX cannot be used in the old NPA for cell service untill all the changes are made. Paging companies are easier to move since DID to their switches need not contain the NPA. As far as cellular in Chicago goes, there are a few NXX conflicts that prevent moving all cellular in 708 and 312 directly to a new NPA without changing a few NXX's. But the majority of NXX's in use for cellular are not duplicated in the other Chicago NPAs. It would be nice not to ever change your NPA. But that is part of progress. Have you noticed how many CO names changed when DDD was introduced? The recent discussions of Seattle, New Orleans and Chicago exchange histories show a few of these. Based on 1940's estimates the exaustion of NPAs in 1994 was right on target. The original plan was 'no resplit within 10 years'. It is a shame to see resplits within 5 years but that is part of the change in technology. Overlays would fix this IF all users would accept numbers in the new area and NO user would be removed from the old area. James E. Bellaire (JEB6) bellaire@tk.com Twin Kings Communications - Sturgis, MI [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: It is quite interesting that you mention the Hammond, Whiting and East Chicago area of northern Indiana in your article. I remember when those all dialed 7-D to reach anywhere in 312. Hammond's exchanges WEstmore-1, 2, and 3 along with TIlden 4 and 5, plus East Chicago's EXport-7 and 8 had to be dialed 219 + 7D from the Chicago side however. Note, it was not 1 + 219 + 7D since we did not dial a leading '1' here until about 1980 or so. Even when Chicago had to dial 219+7D to reach northern Indiana (but not the same way in reverse) for a few years thereafter Calumet City could still dial 7-D to get Hammond/Whiting. Of course this meant that the prefixes 397,398,659, 844,845,931,932,933 could not be assigned in the 312 area. A similar case existed in Antioch, Illinois and North Antioch, Wisconsin where 312-395 could dial 414-396 as seven digits and vice-versa. This did not however prevent the use of 396 elsewhere in northern Illinois; the rule was that subscribers in Antioch had to dial 1+ to reach anywhere in northern Illinois *other than their immediate local area*. I think at one point they asked for community input on the decision and everyone decided they would prefer to be able to call the Wisconsin side of their community with seven digits (instead of ten or eleven) even it if meant having to dial eight digits (1+7D) for everywhere else in the same area code. That was a long, long time before the 312/708 split of course. PAT] ------------------------------ In article , goudreau@dg-rtp.dg.com (Bob Goudreau) writes: > bellaire@tk.com (James E. Bellaire) writes: >> Q. Why should NPAs be required to split rather than be overlaid? >> A. They should not. NPA overlays have been in use for several years in >> New York and California. > New York City's 917 NPA has certainly existed for several years, but > as far as I know, it is the *only* overlay in the entire NANP (though > overlays almost happened in other places like Chicago, Miami and > Atlanta). What California NPA were you referring to? There is another one in place and operating right now -- 281 here in Houston, and 972 will be overlaid on 214 (i.e., Dallas) six months from now. >> This means 10 or 11 digit dialing for local calls, with the old >> users being able to keep their numbers. Sometimes 7 digit dialing is >> allowed IF the area code is the same. > What service areas are there that *don't* allow intra-NPA local calls > to be dialed using 7D? I'm not aware of any yet, although mandatory > 10D dialing has been mooted as a future option for some metro areas > that might receive overlay NPAs. Indeed, 10D is in its permissive period right now here in 713 (but *not* in the 281 overlay -- any calls made from or to that NPA _must_ be dialed 10D now), and next March 1 10D will become mandatory on all local calls within 713. >> Q. Why should users be forced to use area codes when dialing across NPA >> boundries [sic]? >> A. They are not. Suprised? In many rural areas users can dial across NPA >> and state lines with 7 digits. The only time 10 or 11 digits are used >> is in major metropolitan areas. > This latter statement is certainly false. Inter-NPA 7D dialing is the > exception, not the rule, even in rural areas. It's still in place in the Kansas City area as of a month ago, from personal observation, and in a few border communities in South Dakota (also as of a month ago, from the same personal observation), but in my travels across sixteen states last month, those are the only places I found it. Patrick L. "staying with 713 -- old habits are hard to break" Humphrey ------------------------------ goudreau@dg-rtp.dg.com (Bob Goudreau) includes this question and (his) answer: >> A. They are not. Surprised? In many rural areas users can dial across NPA >> and state lines with 7 digits. The only time 10 or 11 digits are used >> is in major metropolitan areas. > This latter statement is certainly false. Inter-NPA 7D dialing is the > exception, not the rule, even in rural areas. It refers only to LOCAL calls to other area codes. cogorno@netcom.com (Steve Cogorno) writes: > 542 may be an overlay, but that is two years from now. Did you mean 562? It was just announced as a geographical split, which means a second area code change in less than ten years for some people who switched from 213 to 310. And 760 has been announced for split of 619. ------------------------------ In Peter_Mansfield@australia.notes.pw.com writes: >> It will be the fourth city in the world with eight-digit phone >> numbers, after Paris, Tokyo and Hong Kong. > I'm sure that there are other places that I have missed where > eight-digit numbers are already in use. The outer Stockholm suburbs have had eight digit numbers for several years. Those are the old 07xx-xxx xx numbers that were merged with 08 between 1991 (?) and 1993. Those numbers then became 08-5xxx xxxx (we write them 5xx xxx xx). The government regulatory, Post- & Telestyrelsen (PTS), has decided that all new Swedish number series are to be 0 plus nine digits but there is no plan to move all numbers to at least 0 plus eight. I guess dominant operator (& former monopoly) Telia isn't going to change those unless PTS makes them. I wonder if not the competitors would want numbers that are of (almost) equivalent length to that of Telia's ... Sam www.nada.kth.se/~d92-sam, sam@nada.kth.se, +46 7 01234567 ------------------------------ In article , Glenn Shirley =WA TELEC ENG= wrote: > bkron@netcom.com (BUBEYE!) writes: >> It will be the fourth city in the world with eight-digit phone >> numbers, after Paris, Tokyo and Hong Kong. > Depends what you mean by metropolis, I suppose. Melbourne, Australia > (only about three million people I think -- not quite the same scale) > changed to eight digits in May 1995. Parts of Sydney have already but > won't be entirely changed until about half way through next year. > Brisbane was planned for August this year, Adelaide was August next > year, Perth was September 1997 although these were the timetable they > have probably changed. They could hardly be called metropolis' > although Sydney and Melbourne would probably be. A difference is that the Australian area codes don't just cover the cities mentioned. Each of the new Australian area codes will cover at least one whole state. I belive Denmark and Norway also have eight digit codes for wide areas consisting of more than one city. France excluding Paris is also like this. I _think_ that Paris, Tokyo and Hong Kong are the only cities that have an area code for the city that is not shared with anywhere else and which has entirely eight digits numbers. I think that this is what the original statement meant, although it is not exactly what it said. The question as to what other cities should have an arrangement like this but don't will largely be left as an exercise to the reader. (I would argue London, certainly. It might have made sense for places like New York and Los Angeles, too, but the US decided long ago to go for a uniform three + seven digits which rules it out). Michael Jennings Department of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics The University of Cambridge. mjj12@damtp.cambridge.ac.uk ------------------------------ End of TELECOM Digest V15 #352 ******************************