Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!mailrus!accuvax.nwu.edu!nucsrl!telecom-request From: 0004261818@mcimail.com (David Tamkin) Newsgroups: comp.dcom.telecom Subject: Re: I Want to Dial the Area Code Even on a Local Call Message-ID: <8279@accuvax.nwu.edu> Date: 26 May 90 00:12:00 GMT Sender: news@accuvax.nwu.edu Organization: TELECOM Digest Lines: 73 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 385, Message 6 of 10 In volume 10, issue 382, Mark Brader offered one reason that eleven- digit local dialing is forbidden where it isn't required: |Implementation issues aside, Political implementation or engineering implementation? |there is a simple reason to forbid it, one which has certainly been |mentioned in this forum in the past. Mr. Brader's explanation boiled down to this: Mother is as positive as ever that she knows what is best for us better than we know ourselves, and if we dial any sequence we don't *have* to, it can't be that we have our reasons for doing something we thought of on our own. No, we helplessly stupid customers must have made a mistake, so she's going to protect us from ourselves by forbidding whatever she doesn't require. That way we're relieved of thinking. How nice of her. That way she's relieved of admitting that we can think. How nice for her. It's another case of "We don't let you suspend Call Waiting any more because people who did were missing important calls." |Certainly it is not that strong a reason, but in the traditional |environment where people were NOT carrying telephones with memories |{nor laptop computers --DWT} all over the place, it was the most |relevant one. The traditional environment where Mother knows all and customers know nothing, that is. I'm not taking it out on Mr. Brader and don't want this to sound as if I were; I'm peed at the telco attitude. Near my home a frontier between two telco satrapies repeatedly abuts, crosses, adjoins, tickles, body-slams, splatters, and generally abuses the three borderlines between 708 and 312. Living here, I know the boundaries very well, but most people who pass through do not and often tend to guess wrong about which town they're in. The area here is infested with COCOTs, particularly in the Illinois Bell portions. Many of them have no telephone numbers on their faces; those that do often have only seven digits or still read "312" even though they are now in 708. Most Illinois Bell pay phones have just a sticker to put "708" over "312" (and you cannot tell one that really is in 312 from one in 708 whose sticker fell off unless you know the exact boundaries or know which prefixes are which) and their instruction cards speak generically of "this area code" and "other area codes." (During the grace period I saw a 708 sticker on a payphone in what was to remain in 312. The owner of the business told me that someone from Illinois Bell had come in, told him his location would be in 708, and put the sticker onto the coin phone; I suggested he check with Illinois Bell again before changing his stationery.) As for COCOTs, forget about any clarity in dialing instructions. Most of them have no instruction cards at all or silly generic ones that equate "local calls" with seven-digit dialing and "long-distance calls" with eleven-digit dialing. And of course, God forbid that a COCOT should bear its own number so that you know which area code you're dialing from if you don't have the boundary line memorized. So when you want to place a call from an unlabeled pay phone that is, let's say, in 312, to another number in 312, but you think you are in 708 and dial 1312 in front, you can't get through (and COCOTs probably don't tell you what went wrong nor return your money). There's no reason for that. It makes no sense whatever. Centel-owned coin phones are very clear about it: their instruction cards state "You are dialing from area code 312" or "You are dialing from area code 708." They still don't let you dial eleven digits within your own NPA if you wish, but there is less reason to try. David Tamkin P. O. Box 7002 Des Plaines IL 60018-7002 +1 708 518 6769 MCI Mail: 426-1818 CIS: 73720,1570 GEnie: D.W.TAMKIN +1 312 693 0591