Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!accuvax.nwu.edu!nucsrl!telecom-request From: Bill Fenner Newsgroups: comp.dcom.telecom Subject: Re: When People Don't Dial 9 on PBXs Message-ID: <5330@accuvax.nwu.edu> Date: 18 Mar 90 23:19:01 GMT Sender: news@accuvax.nwu.edu Reply-To: Bill Fenner Organization: Engineering Computer Lab, Penn State University Lines: 50 Approved: Telecom@eecs.nwu.edu X-Submissions-To: telecom@eecs.nwu.edu X-Administrivia-To: telecom-request@eecs.nwu.edu X-Telecom-Digest: Volume 10, Issue 183, Message 4 of 9 In article <5259@accuvax.nwu.edu> kaplanr@chaos.cs.brandeis.edu (Robert Kaplan) writes: |Seems to me that if I were assigning numbers here, I would shy away |from using ones whose first three digits were the same as the local |CO's exchanges, namely 647, 890, 891, 893, 894, 897, and 899. And in |fact, no numbers of the form 89xx are used on our phone system. Would |it have been that complicated to not use 647x either? PSU's PBX requires you to dial the last 5 digits of the phone number. PSU's exchanges are 862-, 863-, and 865-, so PSU phone numbers dialled from on campus start with 2-, 3-, and 5-. Now State College, the surrounding town, has exchanges 231,234,237,238,353,355,359. This presents a lot of collisions, but it seems that so far the namespace is so large that there are no 862-3xxx or 863-5xxx numbers assigned. One confusing thing is that State College recently added another exchange, 867. Dialing instructions can no longer say "Drop the 86", because 7-xxxx from on campus gets you nowhere. Another wonderiffic thing about the PSU phone system is the recent addition of 911 emergency calling. Now, the off-campus local-call prefix used to be 9. In offices (863 and 865), off-campus toll-calls would be prefixed with 8, while in the dorms (862) it would be 91. (10xxx worked from the dorms but not from offices.) Starting on the second of March, at 5:30 pm, all off-campus calls were to be prefixed with 8. The only call you could dial starting with 9 is now 911. If you attempt to dial an off-campus number with 9 now, you get a bored-sounding OTC (Office of TeleCommunications) employee saying "You have dialed 9 for an off-campus number. It is now necessary to dial 8 before these calls. Please refer to your centrex users guide for further information." You get intercepted to this recording after dialing the prefix (I.E. 9-234 - recording.) If they can do this, I don't see why tthey couldn't just keep 9 as the access code. Maybe to reduce accidental 911 calls. Bill Fenner wcf@hcx.psu.edu ..!psuvax1!psuhcx!wcf sysop@hogbbs.fidonet.org (1:129/87 - 814/238-9633) ..!lll-winken!/ [Moderator's Note: In addition to his sysoping duties at Heart of Gold (hog) BBS, Mr. Fenner maintains a Fido/Telecom Digest gateway service. Mail to 'Telecom Digest 1:129/87' from any Fido BBS is forwarded here to the Digest automatically. Thanks Bill! PT]