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From: mailrus!uflorida!rm1!bapat@uunet.uu.net (Subodh Bapat)
Newsgroups: comp.dcom.telecom
Subject: Re: Last Four Digits of Phone is '0000'
Message-ID: <15515@accuvax.nwu.edu>
Date: 18 Dec 90 20:10:53 GMT
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In <15360@accuvax.nwu.edu> john@bovine.ati.com (John Higdon) writes:

>If you try to get a '0000' assignment, every excuse
>in the book will be trotted out to keep from giving it to you.

>"This is a special-case number and cannot be assigned."

>"This is a test number and you will receive many wrong numbers from
>telco personel."

>"We are not assigning numbers in the oh-thousands."

>"This is part of a DID assignment."

It's not just 0000 numbers, they'll make excuses if they don't want to
assign you just any number you ask for. When I added two additional
numbers on my residential line for Southern Bell's distinctive calling
service, I wanted to pick the numbers I added. (Southern Bell's charge
for doing so: $5 to search for up to three numbers, then $20 if you
pick one of them).

Since one of the prefixes available in my area was 305-384, I asked
for 305-384-3763 (my trusty "telefun" program told me that
305-ETHERNET was one of the words I could make up with from the
305-384 prefix!). Of course, to maximize my chances, I had called this
number ahead of time and made sure I got a "not-in-service" intercept.

Much to my chagrin, however, Southern Bell told me I couldn't have
this number because it was "reserved for business use". The same was
true of some of the other numbers I asked for. In fact, the only
numbers that seemed to be available were in the 7000-8000 range.

My question is: how do the LECs decide what range of numbers in each
prefix to reserve for whom? Are there different blocks of numbers in
each prefix pre-reserved for, say, residential, business trunks, DID,
and Centrex (even if such services aren't actually connected)? 305-384
is a new prefix in the rapidly expanding West Broward county area, and
it's not even clear that the demographics have developed enough to the
point of presenting a well-defined customer mix profile.

Can anyone with any LEC background or knowledge shed any light on such
number allocation policies?


Subodh Bapat              bapat@rm1.uu.net     OR           ...uunet!rm1!bapat
MS E-204, PO Box 407044,  Racal-Milgo, Ft Lauderdale, FL 33340  (305) 846-6068