[PLUG-TALK] Non-1 calling area from specific cities

Tom tomas.kuchta.lists at gmail.com
Thu Feb 2 20:56:19 UTC 2017


I forgot what was the original point beyond saving ones fingers to type
1-areaCode every time. I apologize in advance for what is to be
LOooNnnG piece.
I do not believe, I used to be designing these systems, that there is
any concept of local or long distance anymore, even on the leftovers of
what appears to be local circuits.
For at least the last 20+ years (with some very rare exceptions - as in
unicorn land) every phone call is treated as data on the local loops as
soon as it hits a line card (which converts it to digital) and is
globaly routed inside OCxxx/ATM/IP data traffic. The line card can be
either in your local exchange or somewhere at your block corner or even
at your kerb. I am assuming that we talk about classic copper phone
line circuit and not VOIP from your VOIP box or modem. All this means
that voice traffic routing and delivery is by a few orders of magnitude
cheaper than the actual cost and traffic needed for long
distance/international packet tracking, billing and calculations.
If you observe that sometimes you need to dial 503 or 1-503 and
sometimes you do not and can use only xxx-yyyy - that is identical to
default domain search at your line termination config. All the phone
service operators could set those defaults if they wish, but for many
reasons they do not. One of the primary reasons is phone number
portability. If your operator sets defaults on your line, they need to
maintain that info related to your location and how/where your voice
data traffic gets routed. This is obviously hard and error prone, and
restricts the operator's ability to treat all the traffic the same.
Additionally it makes services such as - you phone rings at home and at
your cell phone too AND at one/all of the 3-letter-agencies (TM) -
difficult to configure and maintain.
It is of my opinion that the "old" behavior is of a legacy glitch type:
"do not mess with thing that works, especially if you do not understand
them fully" and as such have no meaning to the actual voice traffic
routing/treatment.
All that being said, voice/data lives in oligopoly la-la land around
here, so it is conceivable that user/taxpayer pays for old fashion
mechanical circuit switching aggregated at old fashioned regional
exchange in some isolated places. Though those instances should be easy
to spot by unavailability of easily deploy-able ADSL, cell of fiber
internet connectivity options for the land line.
If someone charges you for the voice phone calls these days - it is for
two reasons only: a) They can (no competition) b) They are running
billing company and not a telecom business. Standard uncompressed voice
traffic is 64kb/s - that is 125,000,000 seconds of conversation per TiB
which is roughly 4 years of constant talking (uncompressed) at AWS
retail price about $4 per TB delivered. What is the point of billing
for the voice traffic in the presence of $10-$40 monthly fixed charge
per landline - other than that your telco can charge you whatever they
dream up on the billing day. Hence - at the telecom level - all voice
traffic is the same - local/longDistance/International, if it is not
the same - someone is wasting $$, so they could charge $$$$ someone
else for it.
Tomas
On Thu, 2017-02-02 at 11:36 -0800, wes wrote:
> On Thu, Feb 2, 2017 at 9:49 AM, Rich Shepard <
> rshepard at appl-ecosys.com> wrote:
> > On Thu, 2 Feb 2017, Russell Johnson wrote:
> > 
> > > On my AT&T cellular, I don't have to dial a one for anywhere in
> > the US. 10
> > > digits.
> > 
> > Russ,
> > 
> >    My Verizon cell phone also knows when a 1 is required. It would
> > be helpful
> > to know the algorithm applied to do this.
> there is not an algorithm. cell phone carriers initiate all calls the
> same way. they simply have no concept of "local" vs "long distance".
> 
> -wes
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