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Area codes

Started by Dan/Panther, November 22, 2008, 02:24:42 AM

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Phonesrfun

Believe it or not, my VoIP provider, Charter Communications (Cable co.) does require the 1 for out of area dialing.  I was on Vonage which did not require it, but Charter does.  When I asked the technician about it when he installed the modem, his reply was that they want their customers to think of them as a telco.  A rather lame reply, but Oh well, I am stuck with it and the price is right.

-Bill G

compubit

Two things...

1) My current VOIP providers require a 1 (VOIP.MS and CallCentric).  Ooma also requires a 1.  My office VOIP provider (who was recently acquired by Vonage) does not.
2) A question regarding running out of numbers: there is a way to add another 25% of numbers to the pool: where 10 digit dialling is required, allow prefixes to start with 1 or 0: for example: (202) 158-7861 or (214) 094-8843.  This adds another approximately 2,000,000 numbers per area code, which can reduce number exhaustion (also meaning fewer overlays or splits). Of course, according to the NANP exhaustion survey, we won't run out of area codes until after 2045...

Jim
A phone phanatic since I was less than 2 (thanks to Fisher Price); collector since a teenager; now able to afford to play!
Favorite Phone: Western Electric Trimline - it just feels right holding it up to my face!

andre_janew

Okay, I was wrong about VoiPs not requiring a 1 or 0 to dial long distance.  Some apparently do.  Does anyone have a cell phone where they have to dial a 1 or 0 to make a long distance  call?

unbeldi

Comparing cell phone service with voice over IP providers just isn't fair.  These are completely different systems and the way the providers are connected to the national and international PSTN networks are rather different.

VoIP providers create an Internet-based interface, e.g., SIP, for customers to the PSTN and often simply pass the dialing method of their wholesale provider along to the customer.  Early VoIP providers had copper T1 and T3 lines going out at the back-end of their systems to a telco, while nowadays they subscribe to one or more wholesale VoIP service(s) that may be aggregators themselves, or someone with a large PSTN switch, such the CS2000 that Verizon Business Wholesale uses.

Hopefully, by the time the NANP numbering pool actually faces final stage exhaustion, we won't need telephone numbers anymore at all.  But people seem to like to keep obsolete technology around... so I won't bet on it.