No not another question on state boundries but area codes ones.
Most I can see. But why on earth did the original 619 extend all the way from San Diego thru the backside (or frontside depending on view) of California to almost Reno, NV?
There are some other weird ones too?
Any ideas?
That original “619” was “714” for a long time and it was used for almost all of Southern California outside of L.A. and the Central Coast.
If you looked at how California’s population is distributed you would see that there aren’t a lot of people living in those areas.
Ahh, when I was a kid, there was just 213 and 714.
Hmmmm. I wonder if a descendent of Elbridge Gerry ever worked for the phone company? Never thought about it, but I’ll bet there was some benefit to somebody in the way the area codes were partitioned.
According to this site
LincMad’s 1947 Area Code Map
Address:http://www.lincmad.com/map1947.html
This shows the original area code divisions. California had 3 and it doesn’t explain the 619. It looks like they took part of 213 and 415 and made 619. Again why did this one extend so far north.
Let me try that link again
You had me going, for a minute. When I was a kid there was no area code that we knew of. It was all operator assist, as the 1947 site mentions.
Speaking of when I was a kid, my mom was a telephone operator way back when. It’s kind of comical to hear how someone would place a long distance call back then. A customer would call the operator, for example in Jacksonville, Texas, and tell her that he wanted to talk to Mr. Sam Jones in Fishkill, New York. Then the customer would hang up, and my mom would get busy. She would pull out her patch cable that ran to Dallas, and when the Dallas operator answered, ask her to connect her to New York (or maybe even an intermediate). The Dallas operator would pull out a patch cable for New York, and then when the New York operator answered, my mom would ask her to connect to Fishkill, and the New York operator would patch her through. When the Fishkill operator answered, my mom would inform her that she needed Mr. Sam Jones, and the Fishkill operator would ring him. Then my mom would call her local customer back and connect the two together. At this time, she would write down on a little piece of paper the start time. When my mom noticed they had hung up, she would write down the finish time and turn that paper in to their billing department.
She recalls a technician tell her that someday the equipment would allow a person to call long-distance without an operator’s intervention, and this sounded like crazy-talk to her.
I live in a gigantic area code. The 707 area code in Northern California stretches from the Bay Area (where I live) clear to the Oregon border. What I find interesting is that most of this area is long-distance for me, but everything for a few hundred miles south (which covers a number of area codes) is a local toll call. Additionally, the neighboring town to the south is in another area code (415) and despite the extra three digits, it’s a local call. I think this is pretty confusing, and am looking forward to the upcoming split of the 707 area.
Of course, that might make it even more confusing… I haven’t seen the lines yet.
The price of your phone call is determined primarily by the distance, not the number of buttons you have to push. Los Angeles County has so many area codes that I’ve lost track: 213, 323, 818, 310, 562, 626, 661, and 760. I can call several of those area codes and have it still be a local call.
As for dividing up the areas, it is a heated political issue. However, the phone companies say that they can’t necessarily draw the boundaries of their codes to match city or county boundaries.
From the same site listed above, check out the map from the 1970s, there you can see the 714 area code in all its past glory.
Los Angeles has all those AC numbers?? I thought that New York City was bad enough when we have 3: 212 for Manhattan and Staten Island; 718 for Brooklyn, Bronx and Queens; and 917 for beepers, faxes, cell phones, modems and web voice mail throughout the city. What are the eight in LA being used for??
Here in Northern Virginia, we used to be able to call DC and two counties of Maryland with just 7 digits, even though we had 3 different area codes.
Now, Virginians and Marylanders must dial 10 digits for the same area. (DC still only needs 7.) To top it off, Norther Virginia now has an overlapping area code for 703.
Maryland used to just have one area code for the entire state, 301. About 10 (or so) years ago they split the state into 2 area codes, 301 and 410. They split the state by a line going roughly from west of Baltimore, heading southeast, with the southwestern part keeping 301 and the northeastern part and eastern shore getting 410.
Then about 3 or 4 years ago, they did an “overlay”, adding 2 more areas codes, overlaying them with the existing area codes, so yes, we have to dial 10 digits just to call our next-door neighbor. And that neighbor might have a different area code than you! One of my new neighbors (who moved in about a year ago) has the new 443 area code.
I’ve gotten used to the 10-digit phone numbers, but it still seems strange to have 2 area codes in one place.
From http://www.areacode-info.com/, the Northeast area-code map. According to this, NYC have overlay codes 646 and 347 as well. I believe that they were assigned, but is anyone actually using them?
And the Toronto area’s geting two overlay codes as well: 647 in six months over the city, and 289 in nine months over the suburbs and surrounding area. However, 646 and 347 can be easily confused with 647. So if New Yorkers dial wrong, they’ll end up talking to Toronto, eh?
That has long been happening already, I might add, with 416 (Toronto and environs) and 516 (Long Island). I’ve had to answer a few wayward Ontarian calls, myself.
LA has a lot of pagers, fax machines, and cell phones and nobody wants a different area code for those types of equipment. Also, people in SoCal don’t want overlays. So they keep dividing up the area codes.
The phone companies have been ordered to stop this for a while.
The phone companies don’t have anything to do with the area codes - what they are, where they are, boundaries, etc. The FCC comes in and says, “we want you to overlay 123 over 345”, or “take the northern half of anywheretown and keep 345 for it and make the southern half of anywheretown the new 123.” And we do it, because we have to. We don’t want to. It’s a big mess, it causes problems, costs us a ton of money to update our equipment. Here in NY they’ve split 914 into 914 and 845. We updated our equipment per the FCC requirements, but some other companies did not get it done in time - for a while, people had trouble calling into our area, because we were ready for 845, but the other phone company’s switches didn’t recognise the number. Hence, screechy sound – really annoying voice "You have dialed a non-existant number, please check the number and dial again.
Always keep in mind, the phone company is VERY highly regulated. We are at the mercy of the FCC on the Federal level and the PUC/PSC at the State level. We charge what they tell us to charge and we do what they tell us to do. We have no choice (if we did, the operators would probably still be connecting the calls for you :))
Take it from me, I’m a victim of the latest area code expansion from both the consumer and the phone company side.
(and, I’m not happy being on either side of it :mad: - I picked my phone number specially, now the new area code changes the numerology of my phone number to an unfavorable one for me ahem I mean I have to redo all my business cards and stationary).
[only semi-related rant]It ticks me off when Dan Rather and his cohorts do “exposes” on “How the Phone Company is screwing you”, but they never bother to reveal that it’s really “How the Federal and State governements are screwing you.” That sets me off every time. [/only semi-related rant]
The edict to split 317 (Central Indiana) into 317 and 765 was disliked by just about everyone in the area. Businesses in areas near the boundaries with the northern and southern Indiana areas (219 and 812), as well as few businesses near the state borders, routinely put their area codes on their advertising and decalwork, and of course everyone had to change their letterhead.
Plus the lines aren’t very rational, and you get strange places like Morgantown where your local calling area includes little pieces of three different area codes. There’s virtually no way to know, short of memorizing a lengthy table of area codes and extensions, whether a call placed from Morgantown is local or long distance.
The 3+3+4 numbering system has been overburdened for years. It’s past time we retired it.
Minxsmom, your info contradicts what happened here with a new area code for the Tampa Bay area. The original plan was to overlay the new code (assigning it to all new phone numbers after a certain date), but after a lot of complaints, the new code was assigned to one county. All the reports indicated that it was GTE’s (the phone company) decision. I never heard the FCC mentioned. Are you saying every single article written over a year’s time got this wrong?
Here’s an example from the Tampa Tribune’s web site. You have to pay 1.95 for the whole article, so I will just paste the intro:
quote: TAMPA - GTE gets a storm of public criticism over its plan to “overlay” a new area code in the three-county 813 region.
More than 20 speakers at a Public Service Commission public hearing Tuesday, including state Sen. Jack Latvala, bashed GTE’s plan for a new area code and 10-digit local dialing in the Tampa Bay area.
end quote
Now that sure sounds to me like the phone company made up the plan to impose the overlay system but was overruled by a state agency. I see no mention of the FCC. You can search for more at:
http://newslibrary.krmediastream.com/cgi-bin/search/tt
TampaFlyer,
I work for a phone company. In the 2+ years I’ve been here We have gone through 5 area code changes. Not once was it our idea. Not once did we have control of how or when it happened.
Do you really think the FCC is going to step up and say, “No, No, angry public. Don’t be mad at GTE. This isn’t their fault, it’s ours.” I don’t know what the newspaper’s or GTE’s motivation was for keeping this quiet (probably retaliation from the FCC - next time GTE needs something - “sorry, GTE, but you made us look bad.” Keep in mind the FCC is an appointed agency that is not answerable to anyone (except the pres., but do you really think he cares?) they can do whatever they want and get away with it).
The FCC controls EVERYTHING. Right down to your local calling area. Whenever we try to expand the calling area for one of the towns here (it has a really teeny local calling area), we have to poll the town and petition the FCC. We get turned down every time. (They don’t feel that “enough” people really want it).
We found out about two of the area code changes (MN 651 to 952 and NY 914 to 845) by reading the newspaper - the FCC hadn’t even told us yet, but they filed a press release in the paper.
I would love to hang this on your newspaper and say that they didn’t check their facts, but, like I said in my mini-rant above, even 60 minutes doesn’t get it right. People just LOVE to hang stuff on the big, bad phone company.
