Changing your phone number to indicate commitment to market? Forum

[Bronck]

I'm keeping my exclusive 212 number until the day I DIE.

Same with my 917. While it's certainly not as balling as 212, it does rank a close second.

But Seinfeld didn't make an episode about 917 numbers did they!?!?!

[sundance95]

I think he meant that you were off by 1M in the other direction. You can't start a number with a 1 or a 0.

Says who? We've already established the phone companies are doing it wrong. I was originally ruling out starting with a 1, but really there's no technical reason a local area cannot start with a 1 and I can think of even less reason to exclude zero. A 1 used to be useful for indicating long distance, but that's not really necessary, you can simply see how many digits were dialed and route the call accordingly.

Yes it is necessary, the international codes depend on reserving the zeros and ones.

[albanach]

I think he meant that you were off by 1M in the other direction. You can't start a number with a 1 or a 0.

Says who? We've already established the phone companies are doing it wrong. I was originally ruling out starting with a 1, but really there's no technical reason a local area cannot start with a 1 and I can think of even less reason to exclude zero. A 1 used to be useful for indicating long distance, but that's not really necessary, you can simply see how many digits were dialed and route the call accordingly.

Yes it is necessary, the international codes depend on reserving the zeros and ones.

Well that would only block numbers starting 011, so reducing the available list by 9999 for any local area. Why could a local area not start 012, or 013?

[The Duck]

I think he meant that you were off by 1M in the other direction. You can't start a number with a 1 or a 0.

Says who? We've already established the phone companies are doing it wrong. I was originally ruling out starting with a 1, but really there's no technical reason a local area cannot start with a 1 and I can think of even less reason to exclude zero. A 1 used to be useful for indicating long distance, but that's not really necessary, you can simply see how many digits were dialed and route the call accordingly.

Yes it is necessary, the international codes depend on reserving the zeros and ones.

Well that would only block numbers starting 011, so reducing the available list by 9999 for any local area. Why could a local area not start 012, or 013?

1 is the US country code so you can't start with it because of how it's read by the switching system. 012+ would work on theory but the remaining 01 series should be set aside for diagnostic and advanced routing. Other countries do it differently and do use them. However it would require overhauling the entire US trunking setup.

Area codes really tie into the switching systems so the reason you see some metros with multiple area codes is because they sit across several trunking systems. It's not as simple as assigning a number to a phone. The numbers actually mean something to the routing system.

[albanach]

1 is the US country code so you can't start with it because of how it's read by the switching system. 012+ would work on theory but the remaining 01 series should be set aside for diagnostic and advanced routing. Other countries do it differently and do use them. However it would require overhauling the entire US trunking setup.

Area codes really tie into the switching systems so the reason you see some metros with multiple area codes is because they sit across several trunking systems. It's not as simple as assigning a number to a phone. The numbers actually mean something to the routing system.

Again, I already said the phone companies are doing it wrong. I have no objection to overhauling a century old system, given the technology has changed somewhat since the days of Alexander Graham Bell.

I disagree about your second statement. I can port my landline number to a VOIP provider. From there I could port it to another cellphone and then port it to a different landline. You can port numbers between cell phone providers in a couple of hours. Technically this is achieved by doing a simple database lookup on the number dialed to figure out where to send the call.

With such a system you can indeed assign a number to a phone/subscriber. There's no reason the same cannot be done to make significantly better use of the phone numbers currently available.

[lynch]

OP never wants to go back to his current area code. Get a new number and text it to all your contacts, then enjoy not dialing 10 digits all the time. It's not like changing a phone number is some unheard-of thing, especially when you've moved.

Or get a new number in your current area code and port the old one to Google Voice - http://support.google.com/voice/bin/ans ... er=1065667

Now the calls you make are from and will display your new number, while everyone with your old number can still reach you.

This is the first time I heard of it but thank you for sharing this information. It really helps me. I just have the same problem on changing my old number worrying that I will missed other calls from my old number. THANKS!