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From: rees@pisa.ifs.umich.edu (Jim Rees)
Newsgroups: comp.dcom.telecom
Subject: Re: Last Four Digits of Phone is '0000'
Message-ID: <15565@accuvax.nwu.edu>
Date: 20 Dec 90 16:05:01 GMT
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Reply-To: rees@citi.umich.edu (Jim Rees)
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X-Telecom-Digest: Volume 10, Issue 895, Message 10 of 11


In article <15515@accuvax.nwu.edu>, mailrus!uflorida!rm1!bapat@
uunet.uu.net (Subodh Bapat) writes:

>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.

Last time I ordered a phone line (residential), I tried to get the
suffix 7337 (spells my last name), in any prefix.  The agent was very
nice about it, said there was no charge, but that this suffix was not
available in any of the local prefixes.  I found this hard to believe
since there are about a dozen prefixes serving this area.

Then I did some math.  Out of about 10000 numbers in any given prefix,
only about 4000 (8^4) will be "desirable" (in the sense that you can
spell something with them).  Of these, not all are really usable,
since you need a certain number of vowels, for example.

Two possibilities come to mind.  Either the phone company reserves
these numbers, or they have all been snatched up by businesses.  It
would be interesting to find out whether business users pay extra for
vanity phone numbers.

I'm in Michigan Bell land, NOrmandy-5 exchange.

On a completely unrelated subject -- in the mux room of our local CO
there are three BBN C-30s sitting in one corner.  Any idea what they
might be doing?  Did BBN have a clearance sale when the Arpanet went
out of business?  Are my phone calls being routed by IMPs?