reduced per month rate, but I believe private line service is pretty
> much available in all but the most remote areas now.
Make that all areas. SLCs and the like made party lines obsolete.
> 2) Five digit dialing in some areas not well populated or served by
>> community dial offices?
> I'd say off the top of my head probably not. When CDO's were all
> step-by-step offices dialing patterns as little as three digits were
> available determined by the number of subscribers and optionally could
> be dialed with all seven numbers with the first few digits "absorbed"
> for local callers. When ESS came into being that all ended.
Electronic switches can handle any dialing plan you can think up. But I believe that by policy it's all 7D or 10D and 1+10D in the PSTN now, since anything else would be too confusing.
R's,
John