Stewie Mac

I'm sorry stut, I've tried to keep my inner pedant under control but I just can't let that drastic singular/plural mismatch get away....

Wee-waw, wee-waw, this is the GRAMMAR POLICE!

ShopAround

In my entire life, I never had a phone number that didn't start with 212 (not counting my cell phone).

donnde

I live in 708 land (Chicago suburbs) and you cannot dial 708 when calling another 708-er on a landline phone. I work in 630 land and you must dial 630 when calling a 630-er.

I do remember my grandparents in the upper peninsula, as recently as the 1970s, only having to dial the last 5 digits to reach a neighbor.

thelark

I've lived in a few states and am now in dfw, but have had my 203 area code cell phone for probably 15 years.

Last week I was picking out a replacement slab of granite for the house we just built and the warehouse manager overheard my phone number and recognized the area code. He was from an area about 30min from where I grew up (though to be fair, most anywhere in CT is 30 min away). We got to chatting about the superiority of New Haven pizza.

Having spent a lot of time in Manhattan, it was easy to remember the exact size of the lot we bought here: 2.12ac

kale73

When I was a kid (1960s), our number was ELgin-71266. I seem to recall that it was possible to reach others in the ELgin exchange by dialing the last 5 digits.

james318

I hate that back in my day, they didn't overlay at first. Just split them geopraph/geopolitacally.

aztimm

They were going to do an overlay in metro Phoenix, back when 602 started getting full.

People didn't want that (actually complained to the state corporation commission), so instead of 1 overlay they created new area codes for the east and west sides of town. It always seemed more fashionable to have a 480 area code, and definitely NOT 623. Heck I felt like I was calling the other side of the world when I dialed 623.
And yes, I still have my 480 number today. AT&T wanted a fee to change it, and I figured everyone has that number anyway, so I'll just keep it.

My work Blackberry is still a 602. I guess I'll need to convert to an iPhone later this year, and I haven't decided if I'll stick with that number or not.

TheBOSman

Just watch out with those 512 numbers...

james318

Oh yes, here in Detroit there is a hierarchy when it comes to who has what area codes.

1: 313 -- Generally on the low end of the income spectrum. (This is the original)
2. 586 -- middle class
3. 248 -- rich
4. 810 -- Kid Rock land (fans, not him)
5. 734 -- You might as well be calling Kentucky

There may be a few other overlays mixed in now.

milepig

I remember going through agony in the days when numbers were split and you'd be assigned to a new area code.

312 (Chicago) was one of the original 86 area codes (then called number plan areas) and in 1989 the suburbs were split off into 708. You'd have thought the sky was falling - you couldn't just write down the 7 digits. I don't quite remember, but I think that the existing numbers were just ported over, so if you were 312-123-4567 you got 708-123-4567. Then the 312 versions were recycled for new assignment within Chicago.

That only lasted 7 years until the growth again demanded a split and only the loop kept 312, and the rest of the city got 773.

At some point the outer burbs got 610, and then we had our first "overlay" number, 872. With the overlay, you then always had to dial 10 digits, and again the sky fell in. Now it's just second nature.

I actually remember even further back when you could drop the first 2 numbers for a local call. My exchange growing up was "Export" so the numbers was xxx-39x-xxxx, but all you needed to dial was the x-xxxx. I *think* that at the time you also needed to have the operator do a long distance call, but my mother was, um, frugal, and that almost never happened.

These days, who really cares? We have no land line and plan to keep our current mobile numbers wherever in the country we wind up. There is no reason to change.

Madone59

Has someone let Ludacris know? He will need to update his list....

james318

Someone once explained to me (and maybe it was Google) is that carriers weren't running out of numbers per se, but required to buy huge blocks of them in each area code they wanted to offer an exchange in. So if Vonage wanted a 702 area code, they had to buy like 10,000 instead of like 500.

If my hotel's internet didn't suck so bad I'd try to find the source.

WIRunner

That has changed about 15 years ago. It wasn't too bad for a while, especially in wireless, provided that the rate-centres were the same. When the change was made a carrier no longer needed to own the entire NPA-NXX, but were allowed to buy NPA-NXX-1XXX, 2XXX, etc. This helped more in rural areas than metro areas, in a metro environment, a carrier generally had little problem selling out the entire pool, but in a rural area having one (or two) carriers owning 10-20k numbers, when the population could be less than that didn't make sense. I remember growing up the prefixes were 921, 922, 923, and only businesses had 924. Mobiles were 517 or 948. Then things got weird.

Anyway, what became an issue was when wireless porting happened, if carrier A owned NPA-456-2000 to 2999, and Carrier B was the one who first owned the entire 456 block, the port would frequently fallout, and go into delay (which was a pain to resolve.)

Edit: Source for number pooling. https://www.law.cornell.edu/cfr/text/47/52.20

mvtm

My NYC cell number is 917.

My LA one happens to be 213. To tell you the truth i never paid attention phone area codes in my life. Until i met a person that was obsessed with it. This person was a friend of mine, so i started getting a bunch of numbers for him. He wanted the 212.

I got 917,646,213,202,305 in the attempt to get a hold of a free 212. I have an andress in Manhattan and talked to T-Mobile at that time, they told me i could apply for a 212 by my zip code but once the sim arrives in my place, i had about 10 days to activate the sim and call them with the sim code.. i never did that as i'm never ever in NY and thought it was too much hassle for the fam i have there.

Long story short, my friend didn't move to NY in the end, so i left it like that. I could have gotten one for him but i think it was too much hassle. The only options were paid but not free.

Out of all of them, i only use the 213 as my personal Google Voice number, if i get bored i might use the 917. No idea which one is cooler from the list but i don't give much thought about it.

DenverBrian

Yep, 5-digit dialing very common, and it was LIberty 3-2249 for the old homestead's phone. Everyone dialed 3-2249, and it was wailing and gnashing of teeth all over town when the phone company forced everyone to 7-digit dialing in the 70s.

I'm sure there are peeps on FT who remember FOUR digit dialing.