Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!accuvax.nwu.edu!nucsrl!telecom-request
From: hakanson@cse.ogi.edu (Marion Hakanson)
Newsgroups: comp.dcom.telecom
Subject: Re: How Can 411 Be Flagrantly Abused?
Message-ID: <2163@accuvax.nwu.edu>
Date: 14 Dec 89 03:14:36 GMT
Sender: news@accuvax.nwu.edu
Organization: Oregon Graduate Institute (formerly OGC), Beaverton, OR
Lines: 29
Approved: Telecom@eecs.nwu.edu
X-Submissions-To: telecom@eecs.nwu.edu
X-Administrivia-To: telecom-request@eecs.nwu.edu
X-Telecom-Digest: Volume 9, Issue 573, message 8 of 10


In article <2121@accuvax.nwu.edu> Randal Schwartz writes:

>I've lived in the Pacific Northwest all my life, and had never *heard*
>of 411 as the number for info until I began taking business trips to
>the Bay Area two years ago.  And then, I had exactly the *opposite*
>shock.

>So, is the Pacific Northwest the *only* place in the country that
>*doesn't* use 411?  (And we still don't!)

I've also lived in the NW (in Southern Oregon 'til recently) all of my
life, but I remember when 411 did work.  And when it stopped working.
We lived in the 503-459 prefix area (or whatever you call it), and one
used to be able to dial "9" for the prefix if you were calling inside
the local area.  My memory is hazy, as this was when I was "just a
kid," but I think you could dial neighboring prefixes using just the
last digit, as well.

Anyway, my best guess is that both of these things stopped working
sometime in the late 1960's.  I remember getting a recording that
reminded you to dial "459" when you'd just dialed "9", along with my
parents receiving mailed announcements warning of the cutover.  No
doubt an expert could tell us which old piece of switching equipment
was replaced with which new one.


Marion Hakanson         Domain: hakanson@cse.ogi.edu
                        UUCP  : {hp-pcd,tektronix}!ogicse!hakanson