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From: sirbu@GAUSS.ECE.CMU.EDU (Marvin Sirbu)
Newsgroups: mod.telecom
Subject: How Many Digits?
Message-ID: <8603110534.AA06208@ucbvax.berkeley.edu>
Date: Mon, 10-Mar-86 08:49:25 EST
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Posted: Mon Mar 10 08:49:25 1986
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The US does not have any plans to increase the number of digits in a phone 
number from seven to eight anytime soon.  After all, ten digits for
area codes and numbers is in theory ten billion telephones.

What is going to happen -- in about 1995 -- is that we are going to run
out of area codes if we can only use numbers of the form "N 0/1 N".

The current planning therefore, is that the restriction on area codes
to "N 0/1 N" will be lifted in about 1995.  This will necessitate
MANDATORY 1+ dialing for long distance calls, because it will no
longer be possible to differentiate area codes from exchange codes
by looking at the second digit.

All those COBOL programs out there that do edit checks on the area code
to restrict it to "N 0/1 N" will have to be changed, but -- thank heaven --
you won't have to change all the record sizes for eight digit phone numbers.