"Simonsen, Larry" wrote:
>
> And then you could move to England where villages have their own many times
> different area codes(I think they call them routing codes)  the village my
> wife's parents the village dials 3 digits to anyone in the village.  And
> different lengths of numbers depending on where they call.

Yes, but this (variable length numbers) brings up a different set
of
problems - it is slow because the telco equipment has to wait to
see
if the dialing is complete.  But this does bring up the fact that
we in the USA could get away from the 10 digit requirement if we
had a pre-determined end character (# is the one used now, for
pagers,
e. g.).  The a 4 digit plus # would mean a number within your
exchange,
a 7 digit number plus the # within your area code.  I like it.
it would also allow one country (the USA) to be split up into one
ore more pseudo countries as we run out of area codes.  Or the
USA could cut the Canucks loose and gain a few more area codes.

Nick D.