Do ou have a seven digit number?

[Rhea]

My sister who lives in Wash DC was surprised to hear we still use 7 digit phone numbers out here. She made it sound like the rest of the nation was all dialing 10 digits to call their neighbors. Weird. Glad I don't have that. In my town, you only need 3 digits to remember. Everyone shares the first 4, so you only need to remember 3 (you dial all 7)

 

[beero1000]

Wait, are you talking about ... landlines? I 'member those.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

10 digits here but I have yet to encounter a number where the first three aren't fixed. There's supposedly another local area code but I don't even know what it is.

 

[TSwizzle]

I'm still pissed off we have to use the three digit area code even if you are calling within the same area code. So yeah, ten digit phone numbers it is.

 

[rousseau]

xxx-xxx-xxxx

Area code - City Code - Individual number

I believe London has several city codes.

 

[Rhea]

Wow, more than I thought.

The conversation started because my kids have mobile phones on my sister's family plan. I finally changed the numbers because I was tired of dialing area codes for my kids. She was all, "wait, why does it matter if they have different area codes?" Well, a coule of reasons. 1) I have to memorize it. 2). I have to dial it. 3) it's a long distance charge from home. So it was totally worth changing their numbers from her area code to mine.

And yes, it's a landline at home because we have no cell service.

- - - Updated - - -

xxx-xxx-xxxx

Area code - City Code - Individual number

I believe London has several city codes.

In my town it's AAA-CCC-IIII and the individual numbers all start with 6.

 

[hurtinbuckaroo]

We've been doing 10 digits since the 90's.

 

[couch_sloth]

I'm still pissed off we have to use the three digit area code even if you are calling within the same area code. So yeah, ten digit phone numbers it is.

My cellphone area code is the same one as the area I live in. If I call someone else in that area (who has the same area code), I don't have to plug-in the area code when calling them

 

[fast]

in the recent past, we could get away with simply dialing 7 digits to make local calls. We only had to additionally dial a 1 and the area code if it was long distance (11 digits altogether).

 

[TSwizzle]

I'm still pissed off we have to use the three digit area code even if you are calling within the same area code. So yeah, ten digit phone numbers it is.

My cellphone area code is the same one as the area I live in. If I call someone else in that area (who has the same area code), I don't have to plug-in the area code when calling them

I am surprised at that as I thought the requirement to dial area code had been rolled out everywhere.

 

[Derec]

We've been doing 10 digits since the 90's.

Atlanta too. It depends when you got overlaying area codes like Atlanta's 678 (and later 470).

This reminds me of Seindfeld 646 area code storyline. They got it wrong about dialing 1 though.

Later Kramer gets has a "long distance relationship" and gets lost downtown.

 

[Derec]

3) it's a long distance charge from home

Overlaid local area codes should not be long distance.

 

[horhangi]

No area code here unless dialing out of the area code, then its 1+ area code and 7 digit number

 

[bilby]

Australian mobile numbers are ten digits, and start 04. Landlines are eight digits, plus a two digit area code* if dialing outside the area in question, so calls from here to Queensland landlines require 8 digits, and to all other states, ten digits.










* 02 for New South Wales and the ACT; 03 for Victoria and Tasmania; 07 for Queensland; and 08 for Western Australia, South Australia and the Northern Territory; However the area boundaries don't exactly match the State borders, so there are a handful of NSW/VIC customers along the Murray River who have numbers with the other state's prefix, as they conect to exchanges on the other side of the river; and some far western NSW customers have 08 numbers, as they are connected to exchanges in SA.

The international dialing prefix from Australia is 0011 plus the country code (in defiance of the conventional 00 plus the country code); This is because historically there were other uses for the 00 prefix in Australia - for example 000 is our emergency number (equivalent to US 911 and UK 999), 0055 was used for premium rate lines, and 008 was used for free calls. 00 was also used as the area code for Tasmania, before they were joined with Victoria on the 03 prefix. Telstra reserve some international lines for faxes, and these can be accessed by dialing 0015 instead of 0011. Back in the early 1990s when I first moved here, international voice lines were frequently overloaded at peak times, and you could get around this by dialing 0015 for voice calls, eliminating the dreaded 'All lines to the country you are calling are engaged' message, which was particularly common during the few hours on Christmas Day when it is a reasonable hour for a chat in both countries (at which time the fax lines were mostly idle as businesses were closed). Not a lot of people knew that - it pays to be a geek once in a while

The original prefixes (before the reorganization in the 1990s) was 00 for Tasmania, and for special purpose numbers; 01 for pagers and pre-GSM mobiles, plus information and operator services; 02 for Sydney; 03 for Melbourne; 04 for 'outer Sydney', including 041 for GSM mobile phones; 05 for regional Victoria; 06 for the ACT and regional NSW; 07 for Queensland; 08 for South Australia and the NT; and 09 for Western Australia. Before 1994, most areas used derivative area codes, so to dial the Sunshine Coast you called (075)xxx xxx, and if you were calling locally you only needed to dial six digits. when the local numbers were expanded by adding a digit, the area code was split out to the State level, and became (07) 5xxx xxxx. This renumbering was completed nationwide by 1998, and since then, all Australian numbers (except emergency ans special services numbers) are ten digits, with a two digit prefix, however the format used for landlines is (0x) xxxx xxxx, while mobile numbers are usually written 04xx xxx xxx, perhaps as a reflection of the fact that the 04 prefix is always mandatory. When dialling an Australian number from overseas, the initial 0 is omitted, so a Sydney number is +61 2 xxxx xxxx.

 

[Mumbles]

It's been 10 digits where I've lived for...I don't even remember how long. Boston went that way a while back, when they basically decided to use overlapping area codes instead of constantly splitting "617" into smaller and smaller areas, as I recall.

 

[Rhea]

3) it's a long distance charge from home

Overlaid local area codes should not be long distance.

We don't have overlaid local area codes. We have one. It works for about 75 miles. (Well, aside from the state line, which is 4 miles away. But in the other 3 directions, 75 miles.)

Plus, the family plan whose area code my kids had was 4 states away, anyway. So - long distance.

 

[Rhea]

It's been 10 digits where I've lived for...I don't even remember how long. Boston went that way a while back, when they basically decided to use overlapping area codes instead of constantly splitting "617" into smaller and smaller areas, as I recall.

I grew up with a 617 phone number. the switch was some time after I left in 1991.

 

[Angry Floof]

We've used 10 digit numbers here since I was a kid, I think. Maybe my teens or 20s. I remember being super pissed about having to dial all those *three* extra numbers.

 

[Deepak]

It's been 10 digits where I've lived for...I don't even remember how long. Boston went that way a while back, when they basically decided to use overlapping area codes instead of constantly splitting "617" into smaller and smaller areas, as I recall.

It was with the rollout of the 857 area code in Boston proper in the early 2000s. I had a 781 number issued before the change in the dialing plan, in suburbia, and my cousin had 508 well before that

 

[purple_kathryn]

many many moons ago our number used be 5 digits long
Then they added 2 numbers to the front depending on where you lived - So greater Belfast is 90 and if you were phoning someone in the same phone code area you just dialled 90XXXXX if you were dialing outside of that you had to add an 028 at the front (this is the code for Northern Ireland) but now, regardless of where you're phoning you have input the whole thing

They've also had to increase codes for Belfast 95, 96

Which is interesting in a way because it shows how the population at least for Belfast has grown over the last 30 years