New N.Y. Law Targets Hidden Net LD Tolls

Fri Aug 19 18:59:46 UTC 2005

Thus spake "John Levine" <johnl at iecc.com>
>> Face it, 7D is dead; and even if overlays had not arrived, cell
>> phones would have killed it. Once you learn to think 10D, it's
>> trivial.
>
> Oh, you ignorant rednecks.*  Even my cell phone has 7D dialing and
> it'll be a century before overlays arrive where I live.

Great.  Store 7D numbers in your phone's directory and drive a few hours in 
any direction; see if they still work.  _That_ is why mobile phones are 
killing off 7D, not because of dialing patterns or overlays.

> I really appreciate not having the insane Texas plan where you have
> to memorize every single local prefix to be able to make a fripping
> phone call.

When you have seven nearby area codes (like I do), and parts of each of them 
can be local or toll, there's no hope of memorizing prefixes.  You guess 
based on the distance, and you either get through or a recording tells you 
that you guessed wrong.  If you thought a number was local and it turns out 
to be toll, that may make you think twice about whether you need to find a 
closer number or perhaps not talk as long.

I find it to be nuts that some places have 7D toll calls and 11D local 
calls; how can you have any clue what (if anything) you're paying without 
calling the operator?

Back before CLECs, SWB's phone books had a map with the prefixes assigned to 
each exchange and rules to determine if a call was local or toll.  Now, with 
ten times as many prefixes per exchange (and several possible area codes for 
each) and new prefixes being added every week, that's simply not practical 
anymore.

S

Stephen Sprunk      "Those people who think they know everything
CCIE #3723         are a great annoyance to those of us who do."
K5SSS                                             --Isaac Asimov 