Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!accuvax.nwu.edu!nucsrl!telecom-request From: "Joel B. Levin" Newsgroups: comp.dcom.telecom Subject: Re: Finding Out the "Real" Number Behind a 1-800 Number Message-ID: <2348@accuvax.nwu.edu> Date: 21 Dec 89 13:45:50 GMT Sender: news@accuvax.nwu.edu Organization: TELECOM Digest Lines: 26 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 587, message 2 of 9 One more data point, from the pre-1984 period: We had an 800 number in a place I staffed occasionally, and at the time I knew the Cambridge ANI number (dial it and it "speaks" the number you are calling from). The 800 line had dial tone, so I tried ANI, of course, and I got a legitimate Cambridge number on a normal Cambridge exchange. But when I called that number from another line I got a "not in service" intercept. Also, I believe I was unable to make any real calls from the 800 line, getting either an intercept or reorder (though I could be wrong about this). /JBL bbn@levin.com | "There were sweetheart roses on Yancey Wilmerding's ...!bbn!levin | bureau that morning. Wide-eyed and distraught, she (617)873-3463 | stood with all her faculties rooted to the floor." [Moderator's Note: At a place where I worked in 1969, I had an incoming WATS line on my desk. One day I got five or six wrong numbers in a row, all from the same poor old woman who kept saying, "Hello! Hello?? Did I reach WEllington 5-6924? Hello!".... after a couple such calls, I then realized she was dialing that number, which was used to bring in our 800 number. Of course, she had a wrong number. PT]