Return-Path: Received: by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.7.4/NSCS-1.0S) id DAA16445; Fri, 21 Feb 1997 03:36:08 -0500 (EST) Date: Fri, 21 Feb 1997 03:36:08 -0500 (EST) From: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu (TELECOM Digest Editor) Message-Id: <199702210836.DAA16445@massis.lcs.mit.edu> To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Subject: TELECOM Digest V17 #47 TELECOM Digest Fri, 21 Feb 97 03:36:00 EST Volume 17 : Issue 47 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Re: Say the Words "Area Code" Before a Phone Number (Lionel Ancelet) Re: Say the Words "Area Code" Before a Phone Number (Torsten Lif) Re: Say the Words "Area Code" Before a Phone Number (Eric Truman) Re: Say the Words "Area Code" Before a Phone Number (Paul Robinson) Re: Say the Words "Area Code" Before a Phone Number (Leonard Erickson) Re: Nevada Wants LUCKY 7-7-7 for its Forthcoming NPA Split (John Cropper) Re: At What Point do I File a Lawsuit on my LEC? (John R. Levine) Re: At What Point do I File a Lawsuit on my LEC? (Victor Escobar) Re: 800/888 Confusion Messes up Advertising (David Love) Re: 800/888 Confusion Messes up Advertising (Diamond Dave) TELECOM Digest is an electronic journal devoted mostly but not exclusively to telecommunications topics. It is circulated anywhere there is email, in addition to various telecom forums on a variety of public service systems and networks including Compuserve and America On Line. It is also gatewayed to Usenet where it appears as the moderated newsgroup 'comp.dcom.telecom'. Subscriptions are available to qualified organizations and individual readers. Write and tell us how you qualify: * ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu * The Digest is edited, published and compilation-copyrighted by Patrick Townson of Skokie, Illinois USA. 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Any organizations listed are for identification purposes only and messages should not be considered any official expression by the organization. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- From: la@well.com (Lionel Ancelet) Subject: Re: Say the Words "Area Code" Before a Phone Number Reply-To: la@well.com Organization: The WeLL Date: Thu, 20 Feb 1997 21:54:53 GMT On 12 Feb 1997 20:20:39 GMT, lwinson@bbs.cpcn.com (Lee Winson) wrote: > I've seen various standards in business stationery for phone numbers, > which is very confusing. What does the +1 mean? > I've always thought the conventional standard was (311) 555-1212 > the area code is in parenthesis. No other codes/numbers shown except for > extensions which may follow. I don't like numbers shown as 1-311-555-1234. Well, there happen to be a few phone lines outside USA and Canada, and +1 merely is the country code. As you pointed out, visitors may not necessary know the area code of the business they're visiting. Let alone, the country code. If you were visiting, say, UK, you might appreciate to see a label that says +44 (0) 1234 802 803 on the phone you're using, and not have to find out what the country code is. Regards, Lionel Ancelet ------------------------------ From: Torsten Lif Subject: Re: Say the Words "Area Code" Before a Phone Number Date: Thu, 20 Feb 1997 18:45:29 -0500 Organization: Ericsson Messaging Systems, Woodbury, New York, USA Lee Winson wrote: > I've seen various standards in business stationery for phone numbers, > which is very confusing. What does the +1 mean? > I've always thought the conventional standard was (311) 555-1212 > the area code is in parenthesis. No other codes/numbers shown except for > extensions which may follow. I don't like numbers shown as 1-311-555-1234. The "old" assumptions of the Northern American dialing scheme no longer hold true. It used to be that an area code was identified by having its second digit be a "0" or a "1". Thus, switches could distinguish between "local" dialing and "long distance" based on this alone and the correct number of digits to expect could be determined. But now that the area codes are running out, area codes with leading parts conflicting with local numbers have to be distinguished from local dialing. Thus, you now have to start with a "1" when you want to dial long distance. In effect, your area codes have been extended from 2.2 digits to 3. This matches the schemes that have been used in Europe for decades, where in most cases the "0" is reserved for leading into area codes. The practice in most countries is to provide the number as it has to be dialed. Putting area codes within parenthesis is common. We may argue that the leading digit (usually a "0") which defines the area code is redundant. That's the way it's usually treated here in the US where it's left up to the subscriber to remember the leading "1" before an area code. Which way is better is mostly a matter of personal taste. But the "+1" notation is something different, though many people in the USA get confused by it. Since the access number for international dialing is different between almost all markets, anybody wanting to hand out his phone number to an international clientele is stymied by the plethora of codes. To dial international from Sweden you punch "009", from England "010", from France "19" (at least, that's the way it was a few years ago). In most of the US you dial "011" but I've been to places where it was "01". Let's say you're an American businessman who wants to reach international customers but you don't know what they need to dial for international calls. The "+" is the standardized means of printing this and most people doing international telephony will recognize this and substitute it with what is appropriate on their local market. So, as an example, my office number in Stockholm, Sweden, used to be 719 4881. The area code to Stockholm is 8 but the custom is to always print the leading "0" so the number for domestic dialing is (08) 719 4881. If I wanted to hand this out to somebody in another country I would give the country code to Sweden (46) followed by just the "8" for Stockholm and the local number, but to identify that 46 has to be prefixed by that person's international access number, I'd lead it with a "+". +46 8 719 4881. To dial that from New York you'd go 01146 8 719 4881. From some phones in California it would be 0146 8 719 4881. Now, the country code to USA+Canada is 1 so the way to describe this to somebody from Europe would be to lead with "+1". My office number here in New York is (516) 677 1098. My international business card (if I had one) would say +1 516 677 1098 and a person wanting to call me from London would punch 0101 516 677 1098. Is it good or bad that the US+Canada use the same digit (1) to lead long-distance dialing as the country code they have? Passing judgment on these things is pretty futile but it sure does seem to have a lot of people confused. We'll see if the suggested "European region" code, which is based on a similar scheme, fares any better. ------------------------------ From: Eric Subject: Re: Say the Words "Area Code" Before a Phone Number Date: 20 Feb 1997 23:16:05 -0700 Organization: Primenet Services for the Internet Good advice on how to give out phone numbers. I grew up in Kansas City and always gave out numbers by area code when talking to someone long distance. After all sometimes they were 816 numbers and sometimes they were 913 numbers. Not that it meant much to locals. Hard to keep track of which prefixes were on which side of the state line. I wonder how long after the 913/785 and 816/??? split they make ten digit dialing across the state line. I live in Phoenix now and after our 602/520 split two years ago I keep having to urge people to do this in our office for out of town numbers. (Doesn't seem that long since permissive for Tucson numbers lasted until 12/31/96!!!) Later this year 602 should split/overlay. That will get interesting. At any rate I usually note numbers by writing in the format 311/555-1212. I used to write parenthesis around the area code but now that most major cities will have 10 or 11 digit dialing soon I just think this new format is the way to go. Parenthesis imply that it's optional and in more and more areas it won't be optional. The slash seems more appropriate then 311-555-1212 or 311.555.1212 which are some of the others I've seen recently. Eric trumanjs@primenet.com ------------------------------ From: Paul Robinson Subject: Re: Say the Words "Area Code" Before a Phone Number Date: Thu, 20 Feb 1997 13:51:37 -0500 Organization: Evergreen Software Lee Winson wrote: > In the old days every telephone had a crisply stamped number card > showing clearly the area code, number, and extension. Today, many > phones have only a scribled blur. As it turned out, the Southwestern Bell office in Midland, Texas was using an ordinary desktop adding machine with the "paper" in the machine being dial stickers. (I lived there for a summer about ten or fifteen years ago.) The clerk would punch in the telephone number on a couple of slips and give them to you to put on your phone so you would have clean, printed number stickers. > I've seen various standards in business stationery for phone numbers, > which is very confusing. What does the +1 mean? Standard international practice is to indicate what part of the number is the international code, and what part is the number in that country. In this case, +1 is the code for North America excluding Mexico, e.g. the U.S., Canada and the "forty-eleven" countries that share or used to share the 809 area code. The US and the other North America countries are in the unique position that the internal code for dialing a long distance number within North America (1) is the same code that is used to dial numbers in North America from outside, when proceeded by that country's international dial code. This would be the equivalent of the number dialed after 011 or 01 from the U.S. to place a call outside of North America. > I've always thought the conventional standard was (311) 555-1212 > the area code is in parenthesis. No other codes/numbers shown except for > extensions which may follow. I don't like numbers shown as 1-311-555-1234. What you should show in parenthesis is the portion that is dialed ONLY from within a country, i.e. a caller in London might use +44 (0)171 999 1000 (that's a fictional number; 999 there is the same as 911 in the US), because callers outside of international area code 44 do not dial the 0 before the city code. Callers to the U.S. would dial ALL of the number, so the standard international format would be to use +1 311 555 1212 WITHOUT ANY PARENTHESIS. Paul Robinson Evergreen Software Home page coming soon ------------------------------ From: shadow@krypton.rain.com (Leonard Erickson) Subject: Re: Say the Words "Area Code" Before a Phone Number Date: Thu, 20 Feb 1997 22:37:15 PST Organization: Shadownet lwinson@bbs.cpcn.com (Lee Winson) writes: > I've seen various standards in business stationery for phone numbers, > which is very confusing. What does the +1 mean? That's the iTU-T standard for giving numbers for *international* use. "+" indicates that you dial your country's "international access code" (011 in the US) before dialing the rest of the number. The digits following the + up until the first space are the country code. For the US, Canada and Caribbean this is "1". It's a pure co-incidence that this is the same as the "long distance access code" used for calls inside the US. The international format is basically this: <+> The local portion may have spaces in it. Use of any seperators other than spaces isn't allowed. So as an *international* standard, you should get used to seeing it in print. > I've always thought the conventional standard was (311) 555-1212 > the area code is in parenthesis. No other codes/numbers shown except for > extensions which may follow. I don't like numbers shown as 1-311-555-1234. The recommended format for numbers inside zone 1 (US, Canada, Caribbean) is: <(><)><-> With areacode and exchange being three digits and the local part being four digits. But as far as I know, it *isn't* a standard. So anything that might go to folks outside of Zone 1 should list the number *both* ways. And if the number is an 800 or 888 number, be sure to add a note to use 880 or 881 when calling from outside the US. > In the case of 800 and 888 numbers, it may be appropriate to print in > small letters "TOLL FREE" before the number. Except they *aren't* if you are outside the country ... In case you are wondering, one of the reasons for the special notation for international format is that in many countries the areacodes include leading digits that are *not* used when dialing from outside the country. Leonard Erickson (aka Shadow) shadow@krypton.rain.com <--preferred leonard@qiclab.scn.rain.com <--last resort ------------------------------ From: John Cropper Subject: Re: Nevada Wants LUCKY 7-7-7 for its Forthcoming NPA Split Date: Wed, 19 Feb 1997 15:56:17 -0500 Organization: lincs.net Reply-To: jcropper@nospam.lincs.net Mark J. Cuccia wrote: > A few years back, Nevada wanted to have 711 reserved for their area > code in a future split, since it would be 'lucky seven-eleven' for the > gambling state. However, N11 codes aren't to be used for NPA codes, as > they are 'three-digit' short codes (i.e., 411 for Directory, 611 for > Repair, 811 for Business Office, 911 for Emergencies, etc.). 711 has > been reserved (in Canada at least) for either voice or text access (I > don't remember which form of access - 511 has been reserved in Canada > for the other form of access) to the TDD/TTY operator for the hearing > impaired. > NOW Nevada wants 'lucky 777' for use in its forthcoming NPA split. The > only problem is that the second and third digits are 'identical'. (It > doesn't matter that the first digit is identical to the second or > third digit, however; just that the 'B' and 'C' position digits are > identical.) Codes of _that_ format are reserved for 'Easy-to-Recognize' > purposes. > Nevada has asked the INC for a waiver so that 777 can be turned into a > "General Purpose Code" so that it could be reserved/assigned to the > split of Nevada's existing and only NPA, 702. Pac Bell and the Nevada PSC have already gone the extra step ... It is anticipating the assignment of '777' and is already planning to move Clark county into the 'new NPA 777' (Clark county contains Las Vegas, and its surrounding suburbs) if/when it is approved, possibly as early as 4Q97. Such a split would move 270+ exchanges into the new 777 NPA. It should also be noted that 702-777 is assigned to the city of Elko in the northeast corner of the state ... John Cropper, Webmaster voice: 888.NPA.NFO2 Legacy IS, Networking & Communication Solutions 609.637.9434 P.O. Box 277 fax: 609.637.9430 Pennington, NJ 08534-0277 mailto:jcropper@lincs.net http://www.lincs.net/ http://www.lincs.net/spamoff.htm ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 20 Feb 97 09:00:00 EST From: johnl@iecc.com (John R. Levine) Subject: Re: At What Point do I File a Lawsuit on my LEC? Organization: I.E.C.C., Trumansburg, N.Y. > [SWBT can't implement their "Local Plus" billing on ISDN lines, say it > will take two weeks to fix. ] I suspect you will discover that there's loopholes in the tarriff that let them roll out a service incrementally if that's technically necessary. If they were going to stall you for months, that would be one thing, but two weeks is in the reasonable range. I'd rattle the PSC a little, but not get my hopes way up. I's propose as the solution that since this is just a systematic billing error, and by their own admission it only affects two customers, that they audit and adjust your bill manually until they can get their automatic system to handle it. John R. Levine, IECC, POB 640 Trumansburg NY 14886 +1 607 387 6869 johnl@iecc.com, http://iecc.com/johnl, "New witty saying coming soon." ------------------------------ From: barrett@freedomnet.com (Victor Escobar) Subject: Re: At What Point do I File a Lawsuit on my LEC? Date: Thu, 20 Feb 1997 16:18:37 GMT Organization: INTERNET AMERICA On Sat, 15 Feb 1997 22:15:21 -0700, Billy Newsom wrote: > Is this a false advertising situation? Is this an issue for the Texas > PUC? Is this a class-action lawsuit issue (for all of the ISDN-PRI > customers in D/FW)? Could we sue SWBT for the AT&T charges we will > incur in the interim between now and whenever SWBT says they're ready > for re-installing the Local Plus service? Yes. If a company advertises something for *everyone* and then later changes their claim by saying, `Oh, everybody but YOU!' this constitutes not only fraud and negligence, but incompetence and denial of service. If you took SWB to court, you'd have a field day. > Does anyone know what the PUC can do in this kind of situation? I'm > not sure if this is even major enough to bother with. Our company got > free calls for a month because of it. But that savings will quickly > evaporate in "ten business days" while we start paying AT&T for long > distance. I'm not going to hold my breath. If the PUC is anything like the State Corp. Commission in Virginia, by the end of all this you'll have SWB doing backflips for you. Victor Escobar Internet Consultant ------------------------------ Subject: Re: 800/888 Confusion Messes up Advertising From: David Love Date: 20 Feb 1997 08:08:30 -0700 Pat, At least they picked a number that wasn't in service ... When United Airlines was getting ready to rollout their new shuttle service, they had reserved the vanity number 1-800-SHUTTLE. They then created a brochure which introduced the service and proudly displayed the vanity number. As an added convenience, the actual number was listed right below the vanity number. Immediately after sending that brochure to each of its three million+ Mileage Plus members, they discovered the real number listed was wrong. It was, however, an active 800 number used by an MCI customer (all of United's 800 service is provided by AT&T). Things were hopping for a few days while they worked that one out. Dave ------------------------------ From: bbscorner@juno.com (Diamond Dave) Subject: Re: 800/888 Confusion Messes up Advertising Date: Thu, 20 Feb 1997 20:59:04 GMT Organization: Diamond Mine On Wed, 19 Feb 1997 07:27:32 EST, you scribed: > Judith Oppenheimer wrote in a message I have misplaced to tell of > Compuserve's efforts to promote itself by making reference to the > constant busy signals one gets when trying to use America OnLine > these days. > It seems Compuserve acquired the number 888-NOT-BUSY and advertised > it recently ... but the advertising was broadcast as 800-NOT-BUSY. > Of course this resulted in confusion since the 800 version was not > in service. This was an embarassing, and costly mistake. I am not > certain at this point if it was CIS which incorrectly prepared the > advertising copy or if it was the television stations airing it > which got it wrong. I saw the commercial during the Super Bowl and it listed the 888 number. Dave [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: I got the original item wrong, which I was trying to recall from memory based on Judith's message. It seems everyone concerned -- Compuserve, the ad writers, the telco involved, the television announcers -- all got it right. They all gave it as '888' ... it was John Q. Public who got it wrong. Large numbers of people 'assumed' it was 800, and dialed it that way. Sorry for misquoting your original item, Judith. PAT] ------------------------------ End of TELECOM Digest V17 #47 *****************************