I took a phonology class around 1979, and was told that certain pairs of sounds, like the letter names “V” and “Z” were distinguishable only at frequencies higher than telephones could typically reproduce. This is why spelling things–personal names particularly–over the phone can be so tedious. My last name begins with “van”, and for years I would say “V as in Victor”, A, “N like Nancy”, etc…then recently I started saying “van like in Van Gogh”…:smack:s
All that is also why various agencies and groups came up with spelling alphabets like these.
At least on local calls, that shouldn’t have been the case at all. The carbon transmitter (microphone) and earpiece were essentially unchanged from at least the 1930’s until the “cheapie chirper” throwaway phone era.
And the circuit path for local calls was a true DC-continuity path (up to the impedance matching networks in the phones). Any noise was either bad wiring or clumped carbon in the microphone. And the solution for the latter was giving the mouthpiece a good “whack” on a hard surface to break up the clumps.
When I was growing up in the '80s, there were still ads and businesses in the neighborhood with GE.#-#### and UL.#-####; there may be yet. No more GEdney numbers, though. There’s still (at least, as of two or three years ago) a business in an outer borough somewhere that gives its number as 718-KL.5-0987 (or whatever the number is) even though the 718 area code and lettered exchanges were not contemporaneous.
My parents’ WiFi password is my mother’s old phone number, complete with exchange. After 40+ years of marriage my father still remembers it.
Someone upthread mentioned cellphone codes. Are US cell codes geographical? Here in the UK, the codes are just allocated by provider, and all the providers cover the whole country (or at least they sell phones across the whole country, which isn’t quite the same thing )
And in fact because you can keep your number when you change providers, the codes aren’t even segregated by provider any more: my number starts 07748, which I think was originally a Vodafone number but I am now on the O2 network.
I agree wholeheartedly. If the person on the other end has an accent, it can be very hard to understand what they say.
And got forbid THEY are on a cell phone too.
Years ago they changed the laws so you could take your number with you when you change companies.
In my experience, when you get a cell phone, you will be issued a number based on your location when you got the phone (or activated it). Now, most cell phone plans include long-distance calling for the same price as local, so that’s not a big deal for most people.
But it does make a difference.
For instance, I have worked in places where the store phone could not make long-distance calls. That is because landline providers often still do charge more for long distance.
Where I work right now, we have an employee who’s cell phone says he’s in San Diego, California. Another who is in Florida. And the boss’ phone says New Jersey. To call any of these people on their cell, I have to dial long distance and include their area code, because I am in none of those places.
I read a short blog/article a few years ago where the author had gotten one of those phone-over-internet services, and had bought a wifi cordless phone to use with it. He would sometimes forget he’d put the phone in his coat pocket while gardening, and thus found out that it still rang when people dialed his number if he was on wifi away from home. Like when he ran to Burger King.
Or standing in the airport in Frankfurt.
I worked for Cisco Systems for a while in the late 90s, and worked from home at least one day a week. They set up a VPN (virtual private network) to my house. When I was going to be working at home, I just unplugged my TCP/IP phone from the office and took it home with me. People calling my direct line or dialing my extension from within the company never knew I was answering at home.
Most people don’t know that you can request almost any number as long as it is not already assigned, and you can transfer a number from/to landline/cellphone.
^from landline to cellphone. Not the other way, as far as I know.
When I moved my office across the street in downtown Chicago, AT&T said I couldn’t keep my phone number except by paying an outrageous fee each month. They still enforce geographic territories for the wire centers. So I just ported the number to Ooma, quit paying anyone anything, and now I could answer the phone in Jakarta and my clients wouldn’t know the difference.
You could be right. And sometimes there are other limitations that make no sense. I once wanted to move a number from AT&T to Cellcom, and Cellcom refused to accept any number from AT&T, but told me they would accept a number from Charter.
So I transferred the number from AT&T to Charter, then one day later transferred it to Cellcom. Worked perfectly.
AFAIK with a new cell phone account you can not choose the area code. For some reason that is still dependent on where you buy your cell contract (in my experience).
My sister was going to put my new cellphone account on her plan several years ago. I wanted the area code to reflect the city I live in but the cell company said they had to use the area code where my sister lives.
I didn’t want an area code from halfway across the country so I decided not to share an account with her.
)