Unless it was changed when cell phones came in, that was how it always was in the US.
1 – No letter. Used for signalling function.
2 – ABC
3 – DEF
4 – GHI
5 – JKL
6 – MNO
7 – PRS
8 – TUV
9 – WYZ
0 – no letters. Used to contact the operator
Q and X were left off.
It was still like that when I graduated in 2004. Actually, my memories a bit hazy. But it was like that my freshman year at least, when I was in the dorms.
Before I got a phone in my room in college, I did this, not to say I arrived but to have my parents call me at the cheaper rate they got than the rate I’d have to pay if I either put money in the phone or called collect. This was long before phone cards were common - some companies had them, but they were pretty rare.
Phone company people weren’t stupid. When we moved into a house the summer after I graduated, the installer came, put in our one phone, and said “you can put in your other phones now.” (This was when you had to pay for everyone.)
We did.
As another example, in Beverly Hills there used to be CRestview (27-) and BRadshaw (also 27-). How that worked I don’t know, unless the set of possible third numbers (or the first number back in the day) for each exchange was mutually exclusive.
Most UCLA phone numbers begin with 825-, or they used to, at least. Oddly enough, UCL on the dial is 825, but I’ve read that it’s only a coincidence.
Were there some phones that had every letter on the dial except Q? I remember reading an old Batman comic where a murdered man, with his last lucid moments, scribbles “-Q” on a piece of paper. Batman eventually apprehends the criminal, and when the Boy Wonder asks Batman how he solved the crime, Batman says “the victim wrote down -Q - he was obviously fingering Mr. Dial, his assassin - Dial as in telephone dial!”
When I was a congressional intern in the late '80s, our office had a WATS line with unlimited national calls. We were invited to stay after work hours and call anywhere we wanted to in the U.S. at no charge. Sweet!
That’s generally not nessesary. The Phone company wanted to do that here in the 408 Area Code, but the Civil Grand Jury sent them a letter asking them to come in and justify it. I mean, there’s nearly 10 million possible combos and not even 1 million adults in 408. After just getting the letter- they dropped it.
But here’s what they were doing, because they were lazy- whenever a new pager or cell company wanted “in” Pacbell just went ahead and assigned them numners in blocks of 10,000- since that was the way it used to be done. This is no longer nessesary, and now “overlays” are unnessesary in most cases.
BUT- the Phone company likes overlays as soon you don’t really “think” too much before dialing a area code number (since Bob next door has a different area code than you do) and big companies will spend big bux reprograming all their numbers. Overlays mean more money for the Phone company.
If your telephone company starts talking an “Overlay”- get everyone to scream bloody murder. Get you local politicos in on it, write letters, and if you have a Civil Grand Jury, get them involved.
Now- that being said- a 'split" has to be done every so often. It’s different than an overlay, and easier on everyone involved- but the phone company.
Except that, with a split, some people and/or businesses will end up with a new area code, right? For those people, the overlay would be easier - they get to keep the same old number.
I’m in the 714 area code in California and an overlay is planned. Starting sometime in August 2008 we will need to dial 1+area code even for people that are in the same area code.
The University of Texas has (or had, eight years ago or so) a five-number system. If you were calling from a phone linked to the UT network, you only needed to dial… I believe it must have been five numbers, considering the number of campus phones there must be. I believe their prefix is 47.
I have a hazy recollection that they had so many phone numbers on campus that they had to institute new prefixes, so they may be at regular seven-digit numbers now.
Not true. From this CPUC news release, Pacbell - and all the RBOCs - assigned numbers 10,000 at a time because the FCC required them to:
In planning meetings, it was frequently pointed out that we had no authority to deny a block of numbers to another company, so every competitor that came along got at least 10,000 numbers.
I never met anyone at any level at any RBOC who gave a rat’s ass whether it was an overlay or a split. Both were freaking nightmares to set up. And either way you go, you’ve got pissed-off customers. Give someone an overlay and they’ve got two or more area codes in their house and they’re mad. Do a split and somebody’s area code changes and they’re mad. If they ever put any thought into which was better, the company probably opted for the one that would piss off the fewest screaming politicians.
Now that I look at a picture of an old rotary phone, it looks like I was mistaken about Z actually appearing in the 0 position; however, way back in the old days, it definitely wasn’t on the 9 position. That is the kind of phone I grew up with.
In our court, we only have to dial the four numbers of a colleague’s extension to reach him or her. Any number outside the court but within this area code, we dial 9 plus the seven-digit number.
You’re right about the Z not being on the 9. In the Telephone EXchange Project the only Exchanges beginning with Z are for mobile phones, which would put them a bit later. The letters for the nine (as the picture shows) are WXY.
It actually made more sense to use an X instead of the Z. While there are more words beginning with Z than X, there are many more words where the X is the second letter (exchange, excalibur, ex-parrot, etc.)
Excuse me?
But at least with an overlay and ten-digit dialling, you only get pissed-off customers once.
After the overlay is in and everyone is used to ten-digit phone numbers, you can then slide in additional area codes when needed with no fuss. All the wrenching customer adjustments have been done.
With splits, each time you get a new nightmare.
“as previously required by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC)”
And what did I say “since that was the way* it used to be done.*”
Same cite earlier *“Phone companies will advise the CPUC how many of the phone numbers issued to them are actually being used. Blocks of unused phone numbers will be returned from the phone companies and placed in a pool along with phone numbers that have not been issued yet. Ultimately, phone companies will be issued numbers in 1,000 blocks, rather than giving them an entire prefix or 10,000 numbers for each community they want to serve. This will extend the life of area codes because numbers will be issued more efficiently.” *
Overlays means that the area codes make no sense. You have no idea of what your next dor neighbors area code is.This leads to more wrong numbers which leads to more $$ for Ma Bell. And you have to dial 11 #'s all the fucking time.
“I am delighted to be able to announce that people in the 408 area code will not have to dial eleven digits,” said Commissioner Joel Z. Hyatt who sponsored the decision to stop the area code overlay in the 310 area code. “The disruption generated by implementing 11-digit dialing in the 310 area code demonstrated the hardships of that requirement. The information gained from that experience prompts us to stop the mandatory 11-digit dialing in 408 before it begins.”
Wow, I started a pretty good thread here!
When touch-tone dialing was introduced, what was the original purpose of the * and # keys? And arre there pulse equivalents to them on rotary dial phones for backwards compatibility?
I had to do that while living in central Iowa. I lived in Ames which is about 35 miles north of Des Moines, and the entire area is 515. In order to call a Des Moines number I had to dial 1+ the number, even though it was the same area code. I used to think the reason for that was because of the distance involved it was technically considered long distance and no longer a local number despite the same area code?
They had no specific purpose initially, and no pulse equivalents. When DTMF (dual tone multi-frequency) was created, there were a couple of leftover combinations, and they realized that they might eventually be useful, so they left them on the dialpad. Bell Labs actually surveyed several companies to decide on which symbols to put on the keys. The star and “octothorpe” (yes, it was called that) won out.
Actually, the original spec had 16 combinations - rather than the combination of one of 4 low tones and one of 3 high tones you are familiar with, there was an extra high tone, and added A, B, C and D buttons. The military Autovon project used them to indicate various levels of priority calling.
Wiki on DTMF:
Excuse me? All it means is that you have two or three area codes in your ‘my area’ bin instead of one. I live in an overlay area and all I need to remember is ‘416 and 647 = Toronto’ rather than just ‘416 = Toronto’. It’s not like my neighbours could have any area code at all on their landline.
(Well, actually, because of a split back in '94 and its subsequent overlay, I also need to remember that ‘905 and 289 = maybe local’ as well. But even so, that’s only four area codes.)
