Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!wuarchive!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!casbah.acns.nwu.edu!accuvax.nwu.edu!nucsrl!telecom-request From: john@bovine.ati.com (John Higdon) Newsgroups: comp.dcom.telecom Subject: Re: Voice / TTD Relay Service Instituted in Georgia Message-ID: <16651@accuvax.nwu.edu> Date: 2 Feb 91 10:15:08 GMT Sender: news@accuvax.nwu.edu Reply-To: John Higdon Organization: Green Hills and Cows Lines: 45 Approved: Telecom@eecs.nwu.edu X-Submissions-To: telecom@eecs.nwu.edu X-Administrivia-To: telecom-request@eecs.nwu.edu X-Telecom-Digest: Volume 11, Issue 89, Message 5 of 8 Bob Goudreau writes: > What they *don't* > tell you is that these special numbers are *not* reachable from > outside of Southern Bell territory (such as my workplace, which is in > GTE-land). Trying to dial 1-404-780-2355 from GTE territory > intercepts after a few rings with a "Your call cannot be completed as > dialed" message, exactly the same as trying 1-919-780-2355. I suspect > that no one outside of Georgia's Southern Bell territory will be able > to get information about the Georgia Relay Center from the above > numbers. For years, Pac*Bell has had numbers reachable by the public of the form 811-XXXX. These are toll-free and can be used anywhere with Pac*Bell's territory. For a period, these numbers could not be reached by any non-Pac*Bell telephone. Gradually, the independents started making them available from their phones as well. At least GTE and Contel (soon to be one and the same) did. However, no area code is used when calling. My local residence business office is 811-5700. If I wanted to call that number from San Diego, I would pick up the phone and dial 811-5700 and would then be connected with the same people in the same office as if I dialed it from 408 or 415. For this reason, it would seem impossible to reach these numbers from outside of the state, since none is associated with a particular NPA. Anyone from outside CA ever tried one? John Higdon | P. O. Box 7648 | +1 408 723 1395 john@bovine.ati.com | San Jose, CA 95150 | M o o ! [Moderator's Note: For many years here, 811 was used for hotel/motel or other institutional accounts with switchboards which had to charge back calls to individual extensions. 811 reached a long-distance operator who knew automatically to send back time and charges ASAP via teletype to the subscriber following each call. (Although usually they batched the tickets and sent back all results once an hour.) The rest of us used 211 to reach the same long-distance operator. 811 has been gone for many years. I just now dialed 811, also 1-811. I got intercepted locally at that point and told my call could not be completed as dialed. PAT]