Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!bu.edu!telecom-request From: covert@covert.enet.dec.com (John R. Covert) Newsgroups: comp.dcom.telecom Subject: The Status of 1+703 Dialing Message-ID: Date: 21 Feb 91 08:27:02 GMT Sender: news@bu.edu.bu.edu Organization: TELECOM Digest Lines: 56 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 142, Message 1 of 9 From: Greg Monti, National Public Radio, Washington, DC 202 822-2633 Fax 202 822-2699 Date: 19 February 1991 Re: The Status of 1+703 Dialing A couple of recent postings plus a recent {Washington Post} article make this a suitable time to bring Telecomers up to date. 1. To my knowledge, there is NO move afoot to remove 1+703 dialing from *toll* calls within the 703 area. A call from Arlington to Roanoke, about 200 miles, will continue to be 1 + 703 + seven digits when dialed in either direction. 2. On March 1, 1991, *Extended Area Calls* (which are a half-breed between local and toll calls) from *Northern Virginia* to Prince William County, Virginia, (and to the Arcola Rate Area [703-327] in Loudoun County, Virginia) will be reduced from 1 + 703 + seven digits to just seven digits. These calls were once toll but dropped into the Extended Area rate category in mid-1988. In Virginia, there appears to be a standard that EA calls are seven digits. This seven-digit standard could not apply in 1988 because, at that time, local calls from Northern Virginia to Suburban Maryland were seven digits and about a half-dozen prefixes in Prince William duplicated existing local prefixes in Maryland. Dialing seven digits for both kinds of calls would be ambiguous. Once ten-digit dialing to Maryland, even for local calls, became mandatory on October 1, 1990, the 1 + 703 + seven digits requirement to reach Prince William County could be lifted. To prevent a lot of "wrong number" calls immediately after October 1, C&P decided to wait five months until March 1, before removing the 1 + 703 requirement for Prince William. Currently, one receives a blocking recording when attempting to dial from NVA to PW with 7D. The recording varies according to whether you've dialed one of the duplicated prefixes or not. (If not duplicated, "Your call cannot be completed as dialed ...". If duplicated in local Maryland, "... you must first dial 301 when placing this call ... this is a local call.") Beginning March 1, the seven digit calls *will* go through to PW and 1 + ten digit calls to PW exchanges will be blocked by a new recording similar to the one used *from* Prince William to Northern Virginia (which went into effect immediately in 1988), "It is no longer necessary to dial 1 or 703 when placing this call; please hang up and dial your call again without dialing 1 or 703." 3. On June 29, 1991, calls from Northern Virginia to the Leesburg Rate Area (703-729, 771 and 777) in Loudoun County, Virginia, will be dropped from inter-LATA toll rates and will become Extended Area calls. Dialing will be reduced immediately at that time from 1 + 703 + seven digits to just seven digits. This marks a fairly unusual happening in the post-divestiture telephone industry because Leesburg is not in the Washington LATA (it's in the Culpeper LATA). Calls that were once the purview of competitive long distance carriers are being sucked back into the purview of the local operating companies.