TELECOM Digest Editor noted in response to snipped-for-privacy@bbs.cpcn.com:
[TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: But that being the case, Lisa, why was
> Canada arbitrarily included as part of the 'USA numbering scheme'
> while Mexico was deliberatly excluded? The system back in the 1950's
> was deliberatly designed, IMO, to include all (mostly) English
> speakers and with certain other politics in mind, which was unfortunate. > PAT]
I don't know the actual reason, but I suspect at the time that:
1) The US had considerably more trade and contact ties to Canada than to Mexico in terms of volume. That is, a lot more phone calls back and forth. 2) I suspect the telephone system of Canada was reasonably well developed and would continue to grow and modernize, particularly in the cities. (Certainly there was lots of very rural service, but there was as well in the U.S. They were focusing more on the high volume city calls and presumed operators would continue to manually set up rural calls). 3) I suspect the telephone system of Mexico, on the other hand, was fairly poor given Mexico was a fairly poor country, and probably would not proceed too fast in modernization or expansion. I suspect the ratios of telephones per person were much lower in Mexico than in Canada and not expected to improve much. 4) Going DDD required a considerable investment by local companies. They had to convert their exchanges to be unique, provide interfaces and higher capacity, etc. I suspect Canada was willing to do so as it would improve their internal long distance handling between their cities and towns. Perhaps Mexico was not willing to do make such improvements. Maybe its toll lines were on a delay-basis and it didn't want to invest to capacity to make them a demand-basis.It should be noted that some poor countries world wide didn't have _any_ international access at all until 1972--I recall reading a Bell System announcement about certain countries now being accessible that weren't before.
5) Eventually Mexico or Mexico City did get an area code, but it was pulled later on.Pat, I'm glad you're back. Stay in good health. Your writing seems as good as always.
[TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Lisa, you may wish to also review the message from Anthony Belanga elsehwere in this issue [called 'Mexico'] for some further thoughts on this, and I hope you would agree with me that part of the problem was also the original DDD and IDDD founders were very American-centric ('the world revolves around the USA') people. PAT]