Could you elaborate on the situation in "the most remote areas"? Has
> it been cost effective to replace an isolated long loop shared party
> line with more modern carrier equipment?
Yes. My relatives' telco in Vermont has some really long loops out to remote farms, and they're all private lines. The maintenance is a lot easier, as is the toll billing. They have a Paradyne DSL system that works on long loops and they told me about one farmer who wanted DSL so they took him off the SLC which didn't support DSL and gave him an
18k ft home run so the 60 hz hum on voice calls was deafening but the DSL works fine. In many places the demand for exchanges is so high that the only way
> to create unique dialing is require TEN digits. But in the states I
> mentioned perhaps there is enough 'space' in the exchange assignments
> that five digits could still be unique for a town.
Sure, but for policy reasons dialing is now all 7D or 10D or 1+10D. There is exactly one prefix in my town, and we tell each other our phone numbers with four digits, but the dialing is 7D nonetheless. It's 7D within the area code, which may be local, intralata toll or interlata toll, 1+10 to other area codes.
R's,
John