Expansion telephone numbers

I guess I've been fascinated with telephone numbers since joining Ma Bell as a janitor while I was still in high school. I discovered how machines were used to translate rotary and then push button impulses from the originating phone set to a bank of switches which eventually connected that set with the desired destination set. It fascinated me that people in Springville could call our house by dialing 489-4569 or just 9-4569. Most small towns in Utah had similar shortcuts for local calls.

There were, to my knowledge, no shortcuts for long distance calls or even calls to other exchanges. But at least you didn't have to dial the area code for calls within your own area code. In fact, you had to dial a 1 first to indicate you intended the next three digits to be an area code rather than a local exchange. That convention is still prevalent for land based phones but is obsolete for cell phones (although it's allowed for compatibility purposes.)

I was fascinated when phone numbers went from alphanumeric to wholly numeric numbers. There's still something nostalgic about the number HUnter 9-4569 or FRanklin 3-4553 or ACademy 5-3421 all numbers that would have made sense to me when I was in high school.

But I've gotten so used to our standard 10 digit telephone numbers that I was a little shocked to hear a speaker on a Podcast announce that their station had just gotten one of the new "expansion area codes". "Whoa," I immediately thought and re-listened to that segment. The announcer didn't explain the system very well but enough that I had to do some research.

It turns out that there were two proposals on the table but that may not be true if the announcer was correctly identifying their number as an expansion number. The first of two proposals would insert a 9 as the second digit of every current area code (801-489-4569 becomes 8901-489-4569). Initially this would add no additional capacity but since no area code currently has 9 for a second digit, this would allow a period of time for all the equipment to be upgraded for the new 11 digit number. After that period of time, 11 digits would be required. Then the 9 could be replaced with any digit 0 - 8 essentially increasing the available area codes by 9 times or 900%. An extension of this plan would require insertion of another digit before the 7-digit local number at the same time the 9 is inserted into the area code creating a 12 digit number (801-489-4569 might become 8901-1489-4569). Again, this digit would be ignored during the transition period. After the transition period, you have the option of using digits 0-9 for another increase of 10 times or 1000%.

A second proposal suggests adding 00 or 11 between the area code and the exchange (801-489-4569 might become 8010-0489-4569, for example). Since no 10-digit number has a fourth digit of 0 (or 1), this would signal to the equipment that it is dealing with an expansion number. A non-zero would be processed as an older number. After the transition period, all combinations of two digits could be used instead of the 00 giving an increase of potential numbers of 100 times.

If the Podcast announcer was correct, the first method has been approved and we can all start thinking in terms of a 12 digit phone number with 3 groups of 4 digits. Now you can't say you weren't warned.