Editing 1129: Cell Number
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| Latest revision | Your text | ||
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| title = Cell Number | | title = Cell Number | ||
| image = cell number.png | | image = cell number.png | ||
| + | | imagesize = | ||
| titletext = There's also a +1 sometimes, which is there to keep everyone on their toes. In the future, people who got to pick cool numbers by signing up for Google Voice early will be revered as wizards. | | titletext = There's also a +1 sometimes, which is there to keep everyone on their toes. In the future, people who got to pick cool numbers by signing up for Google Voice early will be revered as wizards. | ||
}} | }} | ||
==Explanation== | ==Explanation== | ||
| β | This comic references the pattern for US telephone numbers, which are ten digits in length. Unlike in other countries, there is no quick way to determine whether that number is for a land-line or mobile customer. In either case, the first three digits are referred to as the "{{w|area code}}", a term dating back to before the proliferation of mobile phones, when specific codes were assigned to geographic regions. The next three digits had some rules based on the {{w|telephone exchange}} but as Randall says, those and the final four numbers are essentially meaningless. | + | This comic references the pattern for US telephone numbers, which are ten digits in length. Unlike in other countries, there is no quick way to determine whether that number is for a land-line or mobile customer. In either case, the first three digits are referred to as the "{{w|area code}}", a term dating back to before the proliferation of mobile phones, when specific codes were assigned to geographic regions. The next three digits had some rules based on the {{w|telephone exchange}} but as Randall says, those and the final four numbers are essentially meaningless. |
| β | In the early days of the mobile era, the geography-based numbering still applied to new mobile lines, so mobile phones would have the same area code as owners' home numbers. Late in 2003, US telephone service providers were required to support "number portability", meaning that customers could theoretically take their mobile phone number with them to a new provider, even when moving to a distant new location. In the early days this wasn't always very easy to do, but became commonplace within a couple years. Since most users opt to keep their numbers constant whenever possible, numbers generally stopped changing after about 2005, instead of shifting when people moved like they were forced to in previous years. Therefore, examination of a given phone number will likely tell you where its owner was living at that time, since their number would not have changed after 2005 due to the portability law. | + | In the early days of the mobile era, the geography-based numbering still applied to new mobile lines, so mobile phones would have the same area code as owners' home numbers. Late in 2003, US telephone service providers were required to support "number portability", meaning that customers could theoretically take their mobile phone number with them to a new provider, even when moving to a distant new location. In the early days this wasn't always very easy to do, but became commonplace within a couple years. Since most users opt to keep their numbers constant whenever possible, numbers generally stopped changing after about 2005, instead of shifting when people moved like they were forced to in previous years. Therefore, examination of a given phone number will likely tell you where its owner was living at that time, since their number would not have changed after 2005 due to the portability law. |
"+1" is the international call prefix for the North American Numbering Plan. | "+1" is the international call prefix for the North American Numbering Plan. | ||
