1xx exchange in area code 212? [telecom]

A local (Boston) TV station had a news story on the transformation of a part of Boston's Chinatown to look like New York City's Chinatown for the filming of the new Ghostbusters movie which is being filmed there. They mentioned such things as changing street signs, adding such things as NY Lottery stickers in doors and NYC health board signs in the windows of restaurants, and signs on buildings with Area Code 212 telephone numbers. While the reporter was discussing how they were trying to make things as realistic as possible, I was sitting there thinking how wrong the sign behind him looked. Why? It had the telephone number 212-165-8220. Exchange 165? I have never seen a 7 digit telephone number begin with a

1 (or 0). Is this a glaring mistake or are they assigning exchanges beginning with 1 (and 0?) in area code 212 now? The place across the street also had a sign with a 212-165-xxxx telephone number as well.

The days of using exchange 555 for phony telephone numbers are long gone, but 165?

Reply to
Michael Moroney
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I believe the practice has always been to use numbers that are not ever likely to be in service. So if the numbers look wrong to you they're probably right.

Reply to
Tom Horne

....

Until you get rid of all 7-digit and 1+7-digit dialing in area code

212, you can't have an exchange that begins with a 0 or 1. This happened Feb. 1, 2003 (for area code 212 and other area codes serving New York City). For other areas, the date may be different, and areas with no area code split yet may still allow 7-digit dialing. 165-1234 could be confused with incomplete dialing of 1-651-234-???? if 7-digit dialing is allowed. (Area code 651 is in Saint Paul, MN.) With the exception of "0" (for Operator), the (North American) phone system doesn't like a valid phone number to be a prefix of another valid phone number.

They *COULD* create a 165 exchange now, but planning seems to be going in another direction. It is expected that unassigned area codes will run out around 2044, based on a 2014 projection.

The plan at that point involves changing all existing phone numbers to insert 00 or 11 between the area code and the exchange (based on country. USA gets 00 and Canada gets 11, or vice versa.). This allows a grace period of using both 10-digit and 12-digit numbers, distinguishing between 10-digit numbers (where the first digit of the exchange is not allowed to be 0 or 1) and 12-digit numbers (where the first digit after the area code is 0 or 1) without any timeouts *IF* the rule against exchanges beginning with 0 or 1 is kept. Therefore, I think the rule will be kept. A flash cutover where all phone numbers change in length overnight is not workable.

So, I expect that using 165 as an exchange will be good as a phony phone number for about 3 decades, and after that, it's a 10-digit phone number and obviously phony and obsolete in a North America filled with 12-digit phone numbers.

Reply to
Gordon Burditt

We've discussed this before here on T-D. See for example:

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In which I asked:

And Pat Townson responded with a lengthy explanation concluding with:

I miss Pat.

Neal McLain

Reply to
Neal McLain

Maybe they did it precisely because there's no such exchange, so the actual owner of the phone number wouldn't receive calls as a result.

Reply to
Barry Margolin

Not very convincing, IMHO. They don't start 7-digit numbers with 1 or

  1. There was talk about 15 years ago about a plan to expand the NANP by using new numbers that did, so that 12-digit new numbers could be distinguished from 10-digit old numbers. But the rate of new area code creation slowed down so there was no need for it, and it was a dumb idea anyway. (I did come up with a better IMHO plan that evolved gracefully to 8 digit in-NPA numbers, with new grouped NPA/SACs only dialed when needed. It would require interim dialing of longer numbers, though.)
Reply to
Fred Goldstein

In article you write:

I gather that 1XX pseudo-prefixes have been used for leased lines and stuff like that, so even in areas with all 10D or 1+10D dialing, they still don't use them. Ditto 0XX prefixes. Making them available is called clearing the D digit, which isn't planned to happen until after they expand the NANP, which currently isn't expected until sometime after 2045. (As described below, they need to use 0 and 1 after the area code to disambiguate numbers during the length transition.) Area codes of the form N9X are currently reserved for a different expansion plan, and could be released to push the transition date out even farther.

I presume you got that from the Wikipedia article. If you read the ATIS report it's based on, you'll find the article misrepresents what the report says. The most likely plan is to insert 0 or 1 after the area code. One option is to add another 0 or 1 before the prefix at the same time, the other is to add only the digit to the area code, and wait to see if they need to add another digit later. (Probably not, I'd guess, since that would give 6000 new area codes, which is a lot.) There'd be a one year transition period during which you could dial either the old 10D or the new 11D or 12D, then 10D would be over and they could release the rest of the new numbers.

They mention the option of expanding Canadian area codes with one digit (1 perhaps) and all others with the other digit (which would be

0), so you could tell Canadian numbers from others without needing a complete table of area codes. That would only be the area code digit, so if they went directly to 12D it could be 10 and 00 or 11 and 01 or even a mix of 11 and 10 for Canada and 00 and 01 for everywhere else.

At this point, a separate digit for Canada doesn't make much sense, since there are a dozen countries other than the US and Canada in the NANP, so you'll still need a full set of area codes to figure out how much a call costs and where to route it. By 2045 it's hard to imagine that the cost of keeping a few thousand area code translations in a switch or PBX would matter to anyone.

R's, John

Reply to
John Levine

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