BL> 24 July 1997 Ottawa Canada
BL> I suppose business cards will need to be reprinted, but normally
BL> people re-order a couple of times a year and the telco will
BL> probably take a couple of years to bring in the change so card
BL> reprinting should be a minor problem.
Well, whenever they get around to changing area codes, you usually have
about a 6 month grace period.
You also might have maybe up to a year's warning.
BL> Yes we are rapidly approaching a ten digit phone number aren't
BL> we?
I think we can foresee a time when 10 will not be enough.
Long before we run out of water, oil, you name it, we face running out
of telephone numbers. Yet politicians do not seem to notice. 
Here's something I received:
Date: 07-24-97 (01:51)              Number: 204312 of 204415 (Refer# NONE)
  To: sammy.finkelman, SAMMY FINKELMAN
From: ao369@lafn.org, DAVID W  DIAL
Subj: Sammy Finkelman - Area Code Splits?  It's Too Late!
Read: NO                            Status: RECEIVER ONLY
Conf: email (1100)               Read Type: GENERAL (+)
It was with some amusement that I read Sammy Finkelman's proposals for
dealing with the impending Area Code splits in New York City.  What Sammy
fears in NYC has already happened in Los Angeles.
The Los Angeles area for the first twenty years of Direct Distance Dialling
had two area codes, 213 for Los Angeles County and 714 for Orange County
and the Inland Empire.  The mushrooming growth of services using telephone
lines such as pagers, fax machines, and modems, along with the population
growth caused the area codes to split and split again starting in 1984 with
the split of 213 into 213 (Los Angeles Basin) and 818 (San Fernando and San
Gabriel Valleys).  The sprawl of metropolitan Los Angeles now extends into
the High Desert to the north, the Low Desert in the east, and Ventura
County to the east.  Nowadays, phone numbers are always given with area
codes because you never know where the caller will be calling from.  It is
possible at a large company to have people working who live in eight
different area codes!
The current area code list for metropolitan Los Angeles is:
213 - Central and South Central Los Angeles
310 - West Los Angeles and South Bay
626 - San Gabriel Valley
760 - Northern and eastern High Desert, Low Desert
762 - Long Beach and Mid-Cities
805 - Ventura and Santa Barbara Counties and High Desert
818 - San Fernando Valley
909 - Inland Empire (San Bernardino, Riverside, and Pomona areas)
Don't worry, Sammy!  You'll get used to using ten digits...you really will!
Dave Dial
On Temporary Duty
In Sunny Corte Madera
ao369@lafn.org
>>
This was not private - it was part of the talk@cybernews.org list.
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