The Dawn of the Eleven-Digit Phone Number!

[sdelmonte]

Well, here we go. I've just gotten an e-mail at work notifying us that beginning February 1, all phone calls in NYC will require the area code before the phone number, even to numbers with the same area code. This depsite the fact that I have yet to encounter a single non-Manhattan phone number with a 347 area code, and have lived quite well till now not dialing 212 when not calling a 646 area coded number.

There must be some way to do this without making everyone in NYC go buggy remembering ten numbers whe seven used to do. And of course the public has no say. For that matter, I would guess that come February 1, most of the public will have no knowledge this is happening as I haven't seen any effort at an ad campaign.

For the life of me, I just don't understand why they couldn't just add a zero to all existing phone numbers, and leave the area codes alone. Adding a new area code doubles the available numbers. Extending all numbers to eight digits would add nine times as many numbers.

Anyway, here's a chipper little press release from our fiends at Verizon, written in the kind of PR-speak I loathe and despise and thank God every day I do not have to practice:

http://newscenter.verizon.com/proactive/newsroom/release.vtml?id=78416

It's almost enough to make me never use a phone again, and stick with e-mail.

Comments

[akawil]

Unfortunately, there is a *huge* amount of software out there that assumes phone numbers in the 3-3-4 format. Much of this software lives in the phone network itself. Changing this would be essentially impossible unless you replace the entire telephone network.

Replacing the entire telephone network is, of course, what I'm working on. :-) But once you've decided to do that, you're better off converting to something more sensible than "telephone numbers." The goal is to go to e-mail style addresses instead.

(BTW, that huge long link in your entry screws up the formatting of my friends page -- Mozilla decides that the whole page should be formatted to the width of the longest word it can't word-break. Could you edit it to add a space or something? Thanks.)

[sdelmonte]

I found a shorter address for the same news release. I hope that helps.

(I also found that Verizon does a good job with its online pressroom. Say what you will about the company, but at least they have a journalist-friendly website.)