Well, let’s imagine how this works: The call ends, and the originating operator is now able to calculate the cost. Let’s see, operator assistance charge, connection charge, then first seven minutes at daytime rate, then another twelve minutes at evening rate. She rings the recipient phone booth and instructs the person who answers—if any—to please insert eight dollars and forty-five cents, in coins. If he doesn’t, he will have gotten something from the phone company for free, and they’ll have no way to track him down. Surprisingly often, the guy in the phone booth said he only had a $25 bill and he’d have to go across the street to get change.
Nope. It’s similar in Ontario. We may not dial a 1 before a local call, and we must dial a 1 or 0 before a long-distance call. Ontario suffers under the brutal tyranny of “mandatory toll alerting”, which is designed to prevent us from dialling long-distance calls when we intend local calls. Problem is, with ten-digit dialling, there is no easy way to distinguish local calls from long-distance calls any more. You just have to learn by experience.
Before, in Ontario, local calls were reachable using 7 digits, and you only put the area code on long-distance calls. Exchange codes were selected in each area so that this worked even for local calls across area-code boundaries.
Now, we dial xxx-xxx-xxxx for local and 1-xxx-xxx-xxxx for long-distance. I’d like to be able to dial 1-xxx-xxx-xxxx for local as well.
I believe that’s called permissive dialing. In my area, where we can use 7 digits for local calls, I’ve found we can dial 1+(area code) or not for local numbers; it goes thru either way. Since you can’t memorize all the prefixes that are local, and it’s too much trouble to look them up, I often just dial the 1+(area code) anyway if I’m not sure. I guess if I were lazier still, I would program a single button on the phone to do those 4 digits for me.
There seems to be a bulge here, around 4/5. Need more answers to see if it’s meaningful. Also I hope the confusion w.r.t. this local thing isn’t causing that. But be very interesting if it continues.
That’s not going to help. The first digit of the phone number that identifies this line is the fifth digit you would have to dial if you were calling from next door. All the numbers for miles around start with the area code for Central London (020 7), then in this immediate area all have the same next three digits as well. I wouldn’t need the 020 to ring my neighbour, but I’d still have to dial everything from the 7 onwards, even though the first four digits of that would be the same as my phone number and only the last four would identify their particular line.
When I was a kid we lived in a small village that had its own exchange, and had a three digit phone number if you were phoning from within the village, but those days are long gone.
Crap, I didn’t read the whole thing. Everywhere I’ve lived in the US, it’s not the last four digits that identify where you live, but the set before that. My neighbor has a totally different last set of numbers, but the same set before that, because…we live in the same area.
So I need to change my answer from 3 to 2.
Last year it was decided that we now have to dial an area code to dial out. To anywhere. Even the neighbor.
Dunno why, as not many people live here. Think they just annexed the 760 area code to bundle it with, maybe, San Diego or something.
So now the middle set really IS the only area-defining set for us, lol.
I also need to change my answer from 4 to 1. The directions are a little confusing.