Area Codes

[Cletus_Vandam]

I just got back from a trip to Tempe Arizona. It brought an interesting question to mind.... Why does the tri-state area of VA/MD/DC require you to dial the area code when calling next door? Is it just me, or is the tri-state area the only place in the country that requires this? If that's the case, why couldn't they get it right?

 

[Dougstermd]

I just got back from a trip to Tempe Arizona. It brought an interesting question to mind.... Why does the tri-state area of VA/MD/DC require you to dial the area code when calling next door? Is it just me, or is the tri-state area the only place in the country that requires this? If that's the case, why couldn't they get it right?

POPULATION EXPLOSION

 

[TNA]

When did DC become a state?

 

[PaxPrincess]

You have to do this in most major cities now.

 

[vanbells]

I remember when you could just dial the seven numbers.

 

[Fubar]

I remember when you could just dial the seven numbers.

I remember when you could dial 3!

 

[Peter Forsberg]

8675309

 

[Cletus_Vandam]

8675309

It's funny you should bring that up. There was a plumber in Tempe with that number on the side of his van. I wonder how long he waited or how much he paid to get that number?

 

[TexasSunflower]

I just got back from a trip to Tempe Arizona. It brought an interesting question to mind.... Why does the tri-state area of VA/MD/DC require you to dial the area code when calling next door? Is it just me, or is the tri-state area the only place in the country that requires this? If that's the case, why couldn't they get it right?

It's due to the growing population. Almost all of Texas has to dial the area code plus the number. Not to mention the explosion of cell phone use over the past 10 years!

 

[AK-74me]

I remember when you could just dial the seven numbers.

Yup, I remember too, what was that the late 80's that they changed that?

 

[bcp]

since there is a finite number of combinations that can be produced with 7 numbers, the need to add the area code came in so that the combinations could be repeated.

I think the possible combinations would be around 9,000,000 numbers assuming that no prefix starts with 0.
everytime the population in a given area exceeds that number, or, the total number of phones in a given area exceeds that number, a new area code is added to allow for the repeat of numbers.
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[Cletus_Vandam]

since there is a finite number of combinations that can be produced with 7 numbers, the need to add the area code came in so that the combinations could be repeated.

I think the possible combinations would be around 9,000,000 numbers assuming that no prefix starts with 0.
everytime the population in a given area exceeds that number, or, the total number of phones in a given area exceeds that number, a new area code is added to allow for the repeat of numbers.
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I understand all of that, area codes have been around as long as I can remember. But the only time you should have to use them is when calling to another area code. If I remember correctly, 301 used to serve charles county, PG county, etc; and 410 served the east side of Pax river St. Mary's and to the north towards Baltimore. If I'm calling the pizza place two miles away. It shouldn't take dialing 10 numbers....

IMO it seems like pi$$ poor planning. All the cells should have been a separate area code, that would have opened things up.

 

[bcp]

I understand all of that, area codes have been around as long as I can remember. But the only time you should have to use them is when calling to another area code. If I remember correctly, 301 used to serve charles county, PG county, etc; and 410 served the east side of Pax river St. Mary's and to the north towards Baltimore. If I'm calling the pizza place two miles away. It shouldn't take dialing 10 numbers....

IMO it seems like pi$$ poor planning. All the cells should have been a separate area code, that would have opened things up.

In davidsonville, you have the 410, and 443 area codes. Since the number of phones in each given area has exceeded the number of combinations, it is needed to dial the extra three to accomodate.
with one area code, as I said you get roughly 9,000,000 numbers. by adding the 3 number area code, the number of possibilities rises to around 7,000,000,000

 

[Tonio]

Why does the tri-state area of VA/MD/DC require you to dial the area code when calling next door?

I don't know about VA or DC, but I do know that Maryland has overlay area codes. The numbers in St. Mary's and Charles have area codes of either 301 or 240, so a number in a community could have either code. I have one area code for my home number and the other for my cell number. I thought it was a strange solution, although the alternative would have been to give St. Mary's, Charles, and Prince George's one area code and Montgomery, Frederick, and the panhandle another code.

Hell, I used to live in a town where all the numbers began with the same two digits, so we only had to dial five numbers to reach anywhere else in town.

 

[lulu belle]

Is it just me, or is the tri-state area the only place in the country that requires this?

Sure not the only place that does this. I have to dial the area code back home in PA for everything too....

 

[Bavarian]

Lexington Park was that way when I came down here, 863 and 862, could skip the 86. Also, the operator came on when dialling long distance and asked the number you were calling from, could give any reasonable number, made for many invalid LD charges. The split of MD into 301 and 410 was relatively recent, late 80's. Then came overlay since changing areacodes was a major problem to some people and computer/alarm systems.
The Philadelphia southern suburbs also have overlay, thare areas that got split off from 215 to 610.
And dialling by letters wasn't that long ago, my phone number growing up was letters and numbers. One could identify the neighborhood by the name.

 

[Dymphna]

I understand all of that, area codes have been around as long as I can remember. But the only time you should have to use them is when calling to another area code. If I remember correctly, 301 used to serve charles county, PG county, etc; and 410 served the east side of Pax river St. Mary's and to the north towards Baltimore. If I'm calling the pizza place two miles away. It shouldn't take dialing 10 numbers....

IMO it seems like pi$$ poor planning. All the cells should have been a separate area code, that would have opened things up.

Used to be all of Maryland was 301. Used to be you didn't have to dial the area code from one Maryland number to another, even if it was long distance. If it was long distance, but still in state, you dialed a "1" but no area code. If you lived in PG or Montgomery county and wanted to call DC, it is local, and you didn't used to have to use the area code, even though it was different than your own. Then they started using the same exchanges in DC as in some places in Maryland... for example many numbers in Prince Frederick have a 535 exchange, but they started using that in DC too. But PF had (at that time) a 301 area code and DC was 202. But for some people in PG county, both numbers are local, so you had to use the area code if it was different from your own. Then they were running out of numbers and were using the same exchanges in Virginia as in Maryland, so they made you use the area code all the time.... That was sometime in the 80's I think. Then they added the 410 to the eastern half of Maryland in the early 90's. Since you were already dialing ten digit phone numbers anyway, when they added the 240 and 443 area codes in the late 90's, they didn't further divide the state geographically because they didn't want to have to reassign all those phone numbers. The 240 and 443 codes share the same geographic space as 301 and 410. But they started using the new codes for new numbers. That's why so many cell phone and fax numbers use 240 or 443. It was because so many people had cells and faxes that created the need for more numbers.

When I worked in DC in 2000, you didn't have to dial the area code if you were calling within the city. I think that is still true, because they only have the one area code, but some people don't realize that because they are so used to using the area codes at home in the suburbs they do it out of habit.

 

[Dymphna]

Lexington Park was that way when I came down here, 863 and 862, could skip the 86. Also, the operator came on when dialling long distance and asked the number you were calling from, could give any reasonable number, made for many invalid LD charges. The split of MD into 301 and 410 was relatively recent, late 80's. Then came overlay since changing areacodes was a major problem to some people and computer/alarm systems.
The Philadelphia southern suburbs also have overlay, thare areas that got split off from 215 to 610.
And dialling by letters wasn't that long ago, my phone number growing up was letters and numbers. One could identify the neighborhood by the name.

My first apartment away from my parents house gave their rental office number as "Valley2-xxxx" That was in 1993. It was even in the phone book that way. That's how I remember that it was around that time that the 410 area code came to be. They had to change the listing in the phone book to include the area code, so they also changed to old fashion way of designating the number...

"VA" is short for "valley" by the way. The first two digits corresponded with those letters... 82. In the 60's all the numbers around there were valley-something and the exchanges are still 821, 822, 823, etc.