To One Or Not To One?
March 18, 2005
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Posted by Aubrey Turner
I’m always getting mixed up about which area codes around here are truly local and which are long distance. It doesn’t really matter from a cost perspective for me, since I’ve got the Verizon Freedom plan and don’t pay per-minute charges any more. The problem is that I’ll dial a number with the ‘1’ and the phone system will tell me I don’t need it, or I’ll dial it without the ‘1’ and it’ll tell me I need it.
But that got me to thinking. If the system knows enough to tell me that the number needs a ‘1’ or not, why not just complete the damn call?
Categories: Random Ramblings
I think that’s the vestigal remains of the prehensile tail of the phone system.
I’m the same way—I want to scream, “just dial it like my cell phone does!”
I think you are asking for an upgraded option currently planned for around 2010. Or you could ask now and have it maybe this year for $100… what you think stuff like that is free? Just a couple lines of computer code or something? What about all the unionized automated voice machines that would become obsolete? You are one hard customer, Aubrey!
It could tell you to punch in star or something to do that. If it dialed the long-distance call automatically, that would be a bummer for people who had misdialed a local number.
What really frosts me is how the phone companies seem to be unable to update their computerized systems so they can add an 8th digit to phone numbers instead of making us dial the local area code.
I lived in Japan when they went to 8 numbers in the Tokyo area. They did it by adding a 3 to every prefix. This was easy to remember because 3 is Tokyo’s area code. Why is it so damn hard here?