-=> Dallas Hinton wrote to Denis Mosko <=-

 DH> North America (both Canada and the USA - I don't know about Mexico) use
 DH> the pattern 1-123-456-7890 Where 1 is the country code, 123 is the area
 DH> code, 456 is the exchange within that area code, and 7890 is the actual
 DH> unique subscriber phone number. In the old days, several subscribers
 DH> would have the same phone number and the number of rings (e.g. 2 rings,
 DH> space, 2 rings, or 1 ring, space, 1 ring) would indicate which of the
 DH> "parties" was being called. This was called a party line.
To the best
 DH> of my knowledge there are no party lines in existence these days.

	Actually, if I remember well, the country codes have been 
	defined by the ITU, and each country has a slightly different
	order for the area codes compared to the US conventions. 

	Party lines were very popular during the 90's, but I don't 
	believe they exist today.

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