At 14:42 22/07/1999 EDT, Wirt Atmar wrote:

>And due to the severe lack of water, New Mexico's population isn't likely to
>grow all that much more, so we may be able to hold off having to implement a
>second area code for quite some time and having to enjoy the pleasures of big
>city life.

Not coincidentally, it's Friday in this big city, and we've had 8-digit
telephone numbers for several years (with a two-digit area code if
you're dialing from within Australia, one digit if you're dialing from
across the big ponds).

We used to have phone numbers that varied from 5, 6 or 7 digits
depending on where you were (smaller numbers in the country, but
they had longer area codes).

We still have some 5 digit numbers within some (mostly big city)
exchanges--for prestigious customers who probably spend a bucket
load on telecommunications (like the Myer department store, taxi
despatch companies, the HP response centre, etc.).

One would think there would be a system for allocating these
numbers to important services, like health care, but no--we at the
Women's & Children's Healthcare Network in Melbourne pay something
like $4 or $5 million a year to telecom providers, and still have 8 digit
numbers (but we do have very smart Ericsson switchboards).

What's worse is what Australia Post did to the postcode system.
As most of you will know, Australia has six states, the Northern
Territory and the Australian Capital Territory, with four-digit
postcodes.

You didn't have to capture the state in an address because you could
infer it from the first digit of the post code (or first two in the case
of the territories).  Then they split off NT from the SA range--that
was fine.  Then they started allocating postcodes according to
mail distribution centres; which, if you were in an outback area
near a state border, might often be in another state.  Not fine.
Then they started allocating postcodes in different ranges for
special purposes.  So we all had to add state abbreviations to
our databases that hold names and addresses (which, rather like
the century of dates, we probably should have been doing all the
time anyway).

Anyway, good Friday cheers from a simpler down-under,
Ron Burnett
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