[jameshart]

Well as a Brit you should know how you make more room in the phonenumber space: awkwardly, slowly, in a series of steps, and with a huge amount of disruption. But a few years later everyone's forgotten about it.

This is in spite of the fact that in order to get from where we were to begin with - with '01' as the area code for London, for example - to where we are today, peoples' numbers went first through the 071/081 split, then through the 'add 1' 0171/0181 era after phONE day, and then finally moved over to the 0207/0208 codes, as a foundation ultimately for London having an 020 area code.

[rogerbinns]

In Britain it was relatively easy as there was only one phone company, plus the one in Hull. Britain already had variable length area codes and numbers, so it wasn't as disruptive. (I was very amused to find one place where the area code was longer than the number!)

The US & Canada had far more companies, plus NANPA 3/7 format being hard coded everywhere - forms, computer programs etc. Trying to implement changes to phone number length will make y2k efforts look trivial.

Heck when places started requiring the dialling of area codes because "local" areas especially big cities had more than one, was disruptive enough. That started happening in the mid-nineties.

Given the choice between huge disruption, or termination fees being the same and the costs of connecting between the phone company and the person making/receiving the calls being their business, the latter isn't an unreasonable choice. When I call you, why should it be relevant to me if you are connected to your choice of carrier by a piece of copper, fibre, radio waves or whatever else?

[stephenr]

I remember when Australia extended all phone numbers to be standard 10 digits (from either 8 or 9 digits previously, depending on area) - I was 11 when it started, and somehow I managed to work it out and still use the phone.

If you're telling me the "greatest country in the world" can't transition to a sensible numbering system because it's "too hard" I will simply point you once again to the various other things Americans are hilariously and depressingly behind the rest of the world on... anything related to measurements, banking, healthcare, politics, comes to mind.

> why should it be relevant to me if you are connected to your choice of carrier by a piece of copper, fibre, radio waves or whatever else

because as someone else in the threaded highlighted, it can be abused (especially in the case of SMS which don't require you to 'pick up' to bill you) to a ridiculous level.

[rogerbinns]

But see Australia was already starting with variable length numbers. NANPA started in the late forties. It is obviously possible to change things, but would require extraordinary effort. For example every computer program knew that NANPA numbers were exactly 10 digits since every program was written after NANPA came about. Having to change all of them would make y2k look trivial!

Something being missed is that callers are still charged to reach your phone company at the base rates - that is not free to them. You then pay your phone company extra for how you connect to them. Abuse is a red herring. When I go to other countries and get a local SIM I get inundated with SMS, which doesn't cost money but sure does cost a huge annoyance. SMS spam is very rare in the US, with the carriers cooperating to stamp it out and always refunding people for any.

[stephenr]

> SMS spam is very rare in the US

The only sms "spam" I have seen.. I think ever, having had a mobile phone in Australia for ~13 years and now Thailand for about 2 years, is messages from the network operator (and its sister companies), here in Thailand. In Australia I don't remember ever getting "spam".

My point was not about "professional" spam, it was about the potential for personal abuse. Someone posted in the thread earlier about racking up $~200 of sms charges against a friend's ex girlfriend.

[rogerbinns]

And that ex-girlfriend would have been able to get the charges reversed plus legal recourses. It is considerably easier to do that when you show you incurred real costs, versus when receiving them is "free". The phone calls to your carrier customer service cost them money too so they are keen to reduce those.

Try India sometime for SMS spam.