‘Cuz It Was Sooooo Popular the First Time
PUC is exhuming the bad idea that once made Robert Scheer prove the stopped clock theory, and is again considering an overlay for the 310 area code. Whoever came up with that moronic concept should be “overlayed” off.
April 26th, 2005 at 4:36 pm
Uh, it sounds (give new area code to most new subscribers, current ones keep current) better than the alternative (split the area - and force the new area code on about half of existing users): the latter was done in Massachusetts (adding 508 code via geographical split from Boston’s 617) and walloped business for a while. Oh, and they promised that calls between 617 and 508 would not be long-distance, which lasted about fifteen months… If the two are merged geographically, they’ll have a big problem if calling your Fire Department becomes a long-distance call.
April 26th, 2005 at 4:59 pm
I can’t speak to Massachusetts, but I can say without reservation that area codes have absolutely nothing to do with determining what is or isn’t a toll call in California. When my family moved to So Cal in 1971, calls from Altadena to Cal State East L.A. (all 213) were free, and calls to Santa Monica (also 213) were not. Altadena has changed area codes twice since then (first to 818 in 1984, and then to 626 in 1997), but as recently as two years ago, the only price Sr. Xrlq paid for dialing in to their systems was the price of putting up with crappy narrowband service.
These constant area code splits (which the phone companies orwellianly call area code “relief”), are not needed, and exist primarily for the convenience of phone companies. Think about it: how many area code splits have there been in your neighborhood? Has the population exploded? If not, what has? Ten years ago they blamed pagers. Five years later they split again, blaming cell phones. Now they’re claiming the need to do it again based on … more cell phones? How many people do you know who have four cell phones, two pagers and a fax machine?
If the “need” for “relief” were really caused by fax machines, I could go along with an overlay for fax lines. It’s not like you ever need to dial a fax machine from a voice line anyway. Cell phones? Maybe. But land lines? As one who was part of the 1999 version of this experiment, I say “hell no.”
April 26th, 2005 at 6:36 pm
When I lived on the Torrance/Redondo Beach line, anything north of about LAX or east of Long Beach was a toll call, and this was before 310 was scissored out of 213.
I occasionally vacation in Maryland, which is divided into two areas, each of which has two codes. A tremendous PITA, if you ask me.
April 26th, 2005 at 9:57 pm
[...] listic activities. Big congrats to Boi from Troi for hitting 6-6-6 today. XRLQ posts about the CPUC’s proposal for a new overlay area code in the 310. J [...]
April 29th, 2005 at 7:22 am
Here in metro Atlanta, both the 404 and 770 area codes are overlain by a 678 area code.
The entire 404/770/678 coverage area — and small, bordering portions of the neighboring (and discontiguous) 706 area code — are all part of the nation’s biggest local calling area. But we have mandatory ten-digit dialing.
I don’t think it will be long before every large metropolitan area has mandatory ten-digit dialing with multiple overlaid area codes. Not so sure the huge local calling area thing will accompany that though…