As others have pointed out, NXX codes or exchange numbers are associated with a rate center, which has geographic coordinates. Others have also pointed out the possible effects of number portability, especially landline-to-wireless, which would have the effect of not ensuring any copper-wire-based geographic association between the number and the area, and there are issues as well about how often people move to a different area after porting their number, and how many people actually port landline to wireless.
I would like to point out a different and probably more important issue regarding non-correspondence between the rate center location and the actual location of the user. That is that an increasing proportion of people -- especially the young, which may be significant as your are talking about renters -- use only wireless phones, with no landline. Wireless carriers, unlike landline carriers, do not take numbers in every rate center they cover with radio signal; nor do they require the customer to take a phone number that is associated in any way with the area where the user lives or is billed.
While I have landlines phone numbers at our Maryland home in the
301-320-xxxx range, my wife and I both have cellphones with the Washington, DC 202-365 prefix. My son and daughter both have cellphones with the 301-467 prefix, which may or may not be associated with our landline rate center. Moreover, my daughter spends 9 months of the year at college in Florida; she exclusively uses her Maryland cellphone number, and that number may not even point to our area of Maryland; it certainly does not identify her general location in Florida.Renters tend to be younger than homeowners, so they are more likely to cut the cord; also they tend to move more often, and I would expect them to keep their wireless number when they move and very possibly use only that number. Accordingly, I would not be surprised if a significant proportion of the telephone numbers of L.A. renters are wireless numbers, which may well be associated with any of the many rate centers in the City of L.A., Los Angeles County, and surrounding counties, and a significant proportion will be wireless numbers from other areas entirely. When people cut the cord, they will upset your expectations. They will keep the same number whether they are living in the City of L.A., Venice, Century City, Pasadena, or even San Diego; and they may well have a phone number that is supposed to be from San Francisco, N.Y., or somewhere else.
Michael D. Sullivan Bethesda, MD (USA) (To reply, change example.invalid to com in the address.)
[TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: This is also true with the increasingly large number of VOIP phones on the market. Vonage even encourages folks to take numbers in 'any area code desired'; after all, the service is unlimited for $24.99 per month. PAT]