[nerdbert]

There was a timeout. If you had touch tone it was faster to dial the whole thing because then the call would connect straight away.

[Symbiote]

Interesting.

In the European countries in familiar with, there would be a prefix digit (usually 0) to show a call was not local. (And a different prefix to make an international call, usually 00.)

So if you live in London and have a landline phone, you can call Westminster Council by dialing 7641 6000. Outside London you'd need to dial 020 7641 6000.

The 0 isn't really part of the number, so from abroad you typically dial 0044 20 7641 6000 (but the international prefix varies, so it's written [phone].)

[jandrese]

Worth it on rotary phones though. Those were so slow to dial, especially if someone had a lot of high digits in their number.

[jdjdjdjdjduuuu]

We didn't have tone dialing until after we had the internet because my dad was cheap and didn't want to pay the fee for tone dialing (vs pulse)

[gpvos]

Alternatively, in some places they actually made sure there were no common prefixes.