What ever happened to the WORDS used in phone numbers?

[Robert Green]

Right after I pressed SEND I realized a more robust disclaimer was probably necessary. Especially when I started reading in Wikipedia how the switched telephone network grew in fits and starts.

Much more chilling is how the Internet grew and how basically unsafe the underlying transport protocols really are:

That's the first case of regression I've ever heard of. Are you POTS, cell, internet or what?

The people who get to look at someone else's work before designing their own usually get a leg up. (-: I've been on both sides of that equation.

I seem to recall a study that said while a large number of people can remember 7 digit phone numbers, when you jump to 8, that large number diminishes significantly.

The same rules hold true for voicemail menus and even on-screen menus. I believe that voicemail menus begin to be a problem for many people after the

4th menu choice. These are all vague, age-tainted memories of a human factors engineering course I took in the early 90's. I'm too lazy to look them up today. The damn birds started in at 2:30 this morning. I suspect it's a cat on the prowl because they were definitely moving from tree to tree and squawking their little bird lungs out.

[Percival P. Cassidy]

616 area code. Our number was originally an AT&T landline number, then ported to Google Voice, which forwards to our "real" number (also 616 but given out only to family members). VOIP using an Obihai box. I don't think we've needed to use the area code from our cell phones either -- also 616, T-Mobile.

But if you have to remember a 3-digit area code as well, you already have to remember a 10-digit number. And if 10-digit numbers are sufficient for the population of the USA (which they are for now, at least), perhaps one could switch to logically/geographically assigned

2-digit area codes and 8-digit "subscriber numbers."

It was interesting to find that although Australian phone numbers within a given area code are xxxx-xxxx, people would speak them as xxx-xxx-xx

-- or was it xx-xxx-xxx?

Perce

[Ashton Crusher]

I suspect what happened was that operator placed calls were replace by automatic dial calls. Once you automate it, it just a lot easier for the designers, manufacturers, installers and repair folks to organize all the mechanical stuff by using a straight numbering system. Obviously you can convert your number back to letters if you want to. Lots of people do convert part of it at least for their 1 - 800 numbers, like 1-800-328-7667 converts to 1-800-Eat-Poop . When I was working for the AZ DOT I requested that my cell number end with 2368.

[Robert Green]

That's a checkered past, so to speak!

It's not that clear cut. In my area there are 4 major area codes - 202,

703, 301 and 240. Those don't really count (memory wise) as 3 digits since they're really one choice out of 4 possible codes in this area.

Admittedly in the whole universe of area codes it would be 3 extra digits to remember, but practically those digits map into a prefix that people see as a single token to remember. There was an awful lot of discussion about this when the switch to full area code dialing first began.

A perfect example of tokenizing. They break the number into smaller subgroups that are easier to remember as single tokens. Area codes are like that and to some extent so are exchanges.

Lots of phones in the area are 937 or 881 exchanges so it works the same way. You end up with both the area code and the exchange collapsed into single tokens. I can think of a number of places that have the 937 code which then tends to get thought of as a single token even though it's three digits.

In college my roommates used to pick various words that could be dialed and call up and say: Did you know your number spells DICKWAD (or some other cuss word)? When they dialed the guy whose number turned out to spell A$$HOLE (277-4053) he answered "Only if you use the number zero to mean the letter O!"

[trader_4]

It maps into an easy token only if you recognize the area code and connect it with the token. There are plenty of new area codes, especially for cell phones, so that is dwindling. For example, IDK most of the new cell phone area codes for NYC anymore. And then with VOIP, the ability to port numbers, Google Voice redirecting calls, etc. the association of the number to a geography is also diminishing.