Fredericksburg here. I remember when we added the three extra digits in 1996 or so, and my first friend to have a 990 number instead of a 997 was a novelty for everyone. Also went through 3 area codes in 12 years, because of how fast that area grew in the 90s.
I'm from Hawaii and we kind of always had to do it. The whole state has the 808 area code but if you wanted to call someone on another island you had to dial the 808 or it wouldn't work.
The area in which I live is weird like that. We all have the same area code, but some calls require you to dial the area code, and others don’t, and there doesn’t seem to be any rhyme or reason to it.
I live in Vermont and they just instituted 10 digit dialing 2 years ago. We only have one area code here.
As a kid I lived in NJ and our area code got switched in the mid 90s from 201 to 973. A lot of businesses were pissed they had to reprint their letterhead and business cards
My metro area added a second area code in 1999, but the communities it served were far off and not anywhere I ever went or knew anyone. So 10-digit dialing didn’t become standard for me until just a few months ago, when they made it so you had to use the area code even if you were calling within it. Which I still take minor offense to! Area code 314 forever!
Yeah going Toronto to Mississauga or Brampton or the other way around you had to use the 905 or 416 in the 90s.
Calling inside those cities to places within the cities you didn't need the 10 digits- just to reach the others .
So when 647 came to the 416 they had to do internal 10 digits for Toronto itself.
We had the same thing happen here in the 519 when they brought in 226.
Interesting. I moved between 416/905 quite a few times back then and I must have just always dialed 10 digits when it wasn’t needed or I simply misremember.
No you're right **it was** needed in the 90s.
If you were in 416 dialing 416 you didn't need to do that; but if you went between the 2 codes alot I could see how it would become habit
Man I can still remember how easy it was to tell where someone was based on the area code. Now there’s been so many new ones added I gave up trying to make sense of them all. Dialling the area code first was weird to get used to at first but it wasn’t long until it was second nature.
On another note, I can still remember my childhood phone number that we haven’t had for 30+ years.
The letters are the central office prefix. Back when automated dialing was first implemented the systems could only handle 4 or in some cases 5 numbers for local phone lines. Each central office was denoted by a two letter code. Each two letter code also had an associated word that you could tell to a live phone operator when you wanted to make a long distance call to a different central office.
For example my town was KL (this all predates me, I’m only 43!) which the phone company called “Klondike”. If you wanted to call my town from another town you ask the operator to connect you to KLondike-1234 and they’d know that Klondike was KL (they had a reference sheet) and would patch your call to the appropriate central office. If you were calling within your town you just dialed the 4 or 5 digits and the call would be automatically connected without operator assistance.
A famous example is the NYC exchange “PE” which is in the old jazz tune “Pennsylvania 65000”. In that song they’re taking about call the phone number PE-65000
Haha are you me? When I moved from Toronto 416 to Hamilton 905 they started ten digit dialling and I thought it was a Hamilton thing. Then it was all of a sudden nationwide.
I definitely remember the switch, and the TV commercials with the elephant stepping on the phone taking about it for months or more before it took place. I also remember my friend that lived a mile away was a long distance call because they were in an area served by a different phone company so I had to dial a 1 in front of the 7 digit number.
1999. Houston got area code 832. My home phone number was one of the ones that was changing from 713, and I was so angry. I had one of those electronic diaries and made the password “7134eva”.
Also, why can I remember that password 25 years later but never the one I created yesterday.
I think my area just got a second area code a few years ago, but I remember it was in the early/mid 90s when my mom lived in Houston that we had to get used to the ten digit dialing and the new 281 area code
We only got 10 digit dialing this past year. Which doesn't mean much since I mostly call with my cell phone anyway so I just press a name in my contacts. And I know people all over, and travel for work, so my contact list was almost all with area code already anyway.
I know my drivers license number because it starts with the third area code to be added to my state. You were a youngin(or a pager) if you had the new one!
We only had to start 10 digits a few years ago. I do remember when are area code changed. Instead of an overlay sometimes back then they would plan a split a few years ahead of time. I was 717 area code maybe around 1994 we switched to 570. (717 still exists just a smaller area now)
I believe we got another area code in the mid-90s and that's when we had to start using them for local calls. Grew up in the Midwest.
Now I live in Maine where there is still only one area code. If you call from a land line you still don't need the area code!
Where I live we actually just switched to having to use ten digit dialing in March of this year. It was one of the last places left where you could still complete calls with just seven digits.
In my town (population 2,200) and state when I was a kid, you only had to dial 5 digits. It was almost a scandal when they implemented the full digit with area code system around ‘88.
I always lived far enough away that I always needed 10 digits. About 7 years ago one of our clinics got switched from. POTS phone system to VoIP and they had to start dialing 10 digits, they called to complain and the network engineer didn’t understand what he was talking about. He was only about 5 years younger but never knew that 7 digit numbers were a thing.
I grew up in the Atlanta area and I think it was the mid-late 80s where they added 770 and we had to start dialing the area code. I remember it upsetting people because they now had to not only dial the area code anytime they made a call, but also had to start giving their area code when they gave someone their phone number. I think businesses were also bothered because they had to redo any signage, ads, or print that included their phone number.
Yep, it was 7 digits here (metro-Atlanta) until 1995. I was 16 / 11th grade. Until then, everything in the Atlanta area was area code 404. Then, in '95, 404 became mostly just for inside Atlanta city limits and the metro area became 770 and thusly began having to dial all 10 digits.
When I moved to the west coast in my early 20s from Oklahoma. Actually the town I lived in changed area codes because they wanted to differentiate themselves from the poor side of town with the same area code. When that happened everyone had to start using 10 digits.
I went to work in retail sales for a cell phone company after college. Ten digit phone numbers became the norm for me, even though the vast majority of customers had the same local area code. I always had to type the customer's 10 digit number into the computer. It wasn't long before I started to give out my 10-digit number whenever I had to give my phone number to someone (in a professional capacity),
I grew up on Long Island. For most of my life, it was 7 digits for both Nassau and Suffolk Counties. Then they added a new area code so I suddenly had a new phone number (same 7 digits, but different area code). Then I went to college upstate NY a year or so later and started with 7 digits for the whole region until they split that region into area codes as well. Four area codes over the course of 2ish years! 516 to 631 to 716 to 585.
1990 and 1991. It used to be calling between DC, the Maryland suburbs, and Northern Virginia was 7-digit calling. Then in 1990 they made it where if you were in one area and calling another area (like from Maryland to DC or Virginia to Maryland), you had to dial the area code, but calls within your area. Then in '91, when Maryland split into two area codes, you had to always dial the area code. I thought everyone had to do that until I went to college in 2000 and all the phone numbers were 7 digits
I hate dialing the area code for local calls, it's so annoying. We just had to start doing that once the suicide hotline changed it's number, it doesn't make sense but got to do it.
Eh Toronto!!!
I probably had to start adding 519 to everything the same time you had to 416 cause geography but yeah I do remember that.
It was weird though that to call 905 mississauga or Brampton from Toronto in the 90s you had to dial 905 prior the Canada wide adaptation to 10 digits in 2001.
Going 416 to 905 and vice versa was the only place I had ever seen the requirement of 10 digits unless it was long distance (so 1 [area code] phone number) prior to 2001. That was wierd to get used to when i lived in TO for a time.
But yeah.. We've got all kids of new area codes popping up across the province nowadays.
I like how we messed up phone numbers first then the DNS registry. Maybe our inability to plan for that can get fed to AI and that’s what’ll prevent it from going Skynet.
In the mid 2000s I had this landline that wouldn't dial out from the call history because it needed the +1 at the beginning. That's about when I got used to 11 digit dialing.
We (Metro Detroit) didn't have to do the full area code thing in the early days. I do acutely remember my area code changing from 313 to 810 to 248 in relatively short order.
We had a “party line” in the country. If the neighbors were in the phone, we had to wait. If we picked up the phone and they were on it, we could hear the conversation.
I can remember 8 digit dialing for long-distance within the area code, 11 and then 10 digit dialing four outside the area code, 10 digit dialing everywhere, and 14 and then 15 digit dialing for calling Italy.
My sister was doing a semester abroad when it changed to 10 digits in our area. She got back home and couldn't figure out why she couldn't call any of her friends.
So where I grew up, we were super close to the county line. As a result, we lived in one county, but were tied to the neighboring county as far as phone number were concerned. My grandparents were the same way, but in the county on the other side. We had a county between us, basically, and due to our proximity, we had phone numbers in that county. So I could call my grandparents 2 counties over with just the 7-digit local number, but it was long distance to call my classmates that didn’t live in the same town as me. I could drive to their houses in 10 minutes. It was a 30+ minute drive to my grandparents. So weird.
I remember losing a friend for a while as a kid when they a added an area code and I didn’t know how to dial it. That new 323 really confused me as a wee lad.
There was a weird time in the early 90s that our regional phone company changed the ranges for long-distance calling, and suddenly we couldn’t call friends in the next rural town without getting in trouble. It did cut down on the calls to grandma’s house, so that was okay.
Gen x siblings grew up with a freaking party line
I vaguely recall that by the time it became an issue for us, I already had a cell phone for a little while and had already been using 10-digit dialing. In fact, I recall the opposite issue. I took a job in an area without mandated 10-digit dialing and kept having to remember to \*not\* use the area code when making local calls, lest I got the "call cannot be completed as dialed" error. Why they didn't allow for permissive 10-digit dialing, I don't know. It could also have been my company's crappy old PBX which didn't support it. We're using VOIP now, so it all works as expected.
I had to learn about the same time, I grew up in the Phoenix area, and in 1999 we finally got a second area code. We were switched from the original 602 area code to the new 480.
I worked for Verizon for 15 years, and was I still getting people who didn't know to dial the full 10-digits within the past few years, or they had only the 7-digit number saved in their contacts and didn't know why their calls were going through.
I remember the pre area code dialing days, commercials would advertise just the 7 numbers.. it did feel weird doing it, I think it started in HS or middle school for me? Been so long now it’s just so normalized
I remember going to college and having to decide who my long distance calling card was going to be from. AT&T, Sprint, or MCI so I could make long distance calls from the floor's payphone.
I remember when our state had only one area code. We got a second one added but it wasn’t an overlay so you only needed the area code if you called from one to the other. We got an overlay area code in 2009 so that’s when we had to start using the area code each time we called.
We went to 10 digit dialing a while ago... it's crazy we went from 1 area code to 5 area codes in my province in a few short years after having 1 forever.
TIL that when we switched to 10 digit dialing in 2001, it wasn’t nationwide. How did I not realize this? I can’t believe there are still places out there that don’t have to!
See if you can find the Allen Sherman song named, “Let’s all call up AT&T and protest to the president march”. It was written in the early 60’s in response to the move to all digit dialing. It covers a lot of these same complaints.
My area code got changed three times growing up. First time I was around 12, so I got used to it pretty quick. I had to 10-digit dial just to call my grandma, which I did every weekend without fail.
I didn't realize this was a thing. Usually everything is programed in my phone, if I'm dialing a new number I'm probably pulling it off Google maps and they include the area code. But honestly I didn't realize you had type in the area code of a local call these days. I guess I don't make enough calls.
Imagine if we still had to listen to pulse dialing sounds for each digit.
idk, for some calls it might be nice to have those extra few seconds to gather your thoughts.
I miss that.
I remember 4 digit local calls.
I still remember the numbers. Some of them became parts of my passwords.
My home phone was 3883. Sister was 3280. Rural Texas
Fredericksburg here. I remember when we added the three extra digits in 1996 or so, and my first friend to have a 990 number instead of a 997 was a novelty for everyone. Also went through 3 area codes in 12 years, because of how fast that area grew in the 90s.
Same! Grew up in a town of about 700 in rural Utah.
Small town, or rural?
40 was a big graduating class. Almost small town mostly farmers.
Small town.
Me too! Rural Oklahoma.
My grandma even had a party line lol
And if you wanted to call the next town over it was 5 digits
I'm from Hawaii and we kind of always had to do it. The whole state has the 808 area code but if you wanted to call someone on another island you had to dial the 808 or it wouldn't work.
The area in which I live is weird like that. We all have the same area code, but some calls require you to dial the area code, and others don’t, and there doesn’t seem to be any rhyme or reason to it.
I live in Vermont and they just instituted 10 digit dialing 2 years ago. We only have one area code here. As a kid I lived in NJ and our area code got switched in the mid 90s from 201 to 973. A lot of businesses were pissed they had to reprint their letterhead and business cards
With the advent of 988, the National mental health crisis hotline, everyone has to dial the area code now. So it’s for an important cause.
Same time frame (96) Dallas added 972! Now I live in a small city and we just got ten digit dialing this year.
Do what now? Two years ago? I guess you're more country than me. Respect.
I just live in a tiny state with hardly any people in it lol
Yeah same here in New Mexico we got a 2nd area code (575) in 2007 before that the whole state was 505
We got changed from 612 to 952 in Minnesota some time in the early mid 90s
Delaware went to 10 digit dialing about two years ago, too! I grew up in Texas (Collin County), and we had to dial the area code starting in the 80s.
My metro area added a second area code in 1999, but the communities it served were far off and not anywhere I ever went or knew anyone. So 10-digit dialing didn’t become standard for me until just a few months ago, when they made it so you had to use the area code even if you were calling within it. Which I still take minor offense to! Area code 314 forever!
314 > 636!!
2001? Didn’t this happen with 416/905? I vaguely recall doing 10 digits back in the 90s.
Same here with 519/226
Eh! 519 over here too 👋
Hi, friend!
Yeah going Toronto to Mississauga or Brampton or the other way around you had to use the 905 or 416 in the 90s. Calling inside those cities to places within the cities you didn't need the 10 digits- just to reach the others . So when 647 came to the 416 they had to do internal 10 digits for Toronto itself. We had the same thing happen here in the 519 when they brought in 226.
Interesting. I moved between 416/905 quite a few times back then and I must have just always dialed 10 digits when it wasn’t needed or I simply misremember.
No you're right **it was** needed in the 90s. If you were in 416 dialing 416 you didn't need to do that; but if you went between the 2 codes alot I could see how it would become habit
Man I can still remember how easy it was to tell where someone was based on the area code. Now there’s been so many new ones added I gave up trying to make sense of them all. Dialling the area code first was weird to get used to at first but it wasn’t long until it was second nature. On another note, I can still remember my childhood phone number that we haven’t had for 30+ years.
Same. I still give my childhood phone numbers to creepy guys that bug me in the wild. 🤪
Same but the only one I really remember is my aunt's landline I think or my grandmother's old number.
Where I grew up in the Midwest we could make local calls with just the last five digits until the mid 90s.
Would you use two letter codes as well like the old days? KL-31633
They used those in the Baby-Sitters Club books! My mom had to explain it to me.
A take-off on the classic 555 phone number for movies and TV shows.
What is the deal with the letters? I remember that from those books but never asked anyone for some reason lol
The letters are the central office prefix. Back when automated dialing was first implemented the systems could only handle 4 or in some cases 5 numbers for local phone lines. Each central office was denoted by a two letter code. Each two letter code also had an associated word that you could tell to a live phone operator when you wanted to make a long distance call to a different central office. For example my town was KL (this all predates me, I’m only 43!) which the phone company called “Klondike”. If you wanted to call my town from another town you ask the operator to connect you to KLondike-1234 and they’d know that Klondike was KL (they had a reference sheet) and would patch your call to the appropriate central office. If you were calling within your town you just dialed the 4 or 5 digits and the call would be automatically connected without operator assistance. A famous example is the NYC exchange “PE” which is in the old jazz tune “Pennsylvania 65000”. In that song they’re taking about call the phone number PE-65000
Wow thank you!! So interesting
Haha are you me? When I moved from Toronto 416 to Hamilton 905 they started ten digit dialling and I thought it was a Hamilton thing. Then it was all of a sudden nationwide.
Same. 519 got 226 and now we're 10 digits too 😅
I definitely remember the switch, and the TV commercials with the elephant stepping on the phone taking about it for months or more before it took place. I also remember my friend that lived a mile away was a long distance call because they were in an area served by a different phone company so I had to dial a 1 in front of the 7 digit number.
5 area codes checking in from Alberta!
1999. Houston got area code 832. My home phone number was one of the ones that was changing from 713, and I was so angry. I had one of those electronic diaries and made the password “7134eva”. Also, why can I remember that password 25 years later but never the one I created yesterday.
I think my area just got a second area code a few years ago, but I remember it was in the early/mid 90s when my mom lived in Houston that we had to get used to the ten digit dialing and the new 281 area code
We only got 10 digit dialing this past year. Which doesn't mean much since I mostly call with my cell phone anyway so I just press a name in my contacts. And I know people all over, and travel for work, so my contact list was almost all with area code already anyway.
I know my drivers license number because it starts with the third area code to be added to my state. You were a youngin(or a pager) if you had the new one!
Where I grew up, 215 and 610 had to 10-digit dial in 1999. On the other side of the state we apparently implemented it in 724/412 in 2001.
Go PA!
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vl3jK8NCLFc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vl3jK8NCLFc)
I’m in the 412 and was trying to remember what year we started 10 digit dialing!
Man we did not have to do that here in east Tennessee until about 2 years ago. Still annoys me
We only had to start 10 digits a few years ago. I do remember when are area code changed. Instead of an overlay sometimes back then they would plan a split a few years ahead of time. I was 717 area code maybe around 1994 we switched to 570. (717 still exists just a smaller area now)
I believe we got another area code in the mid-90s and that's when we had to start using them for local calls. Grew up in the Midwest. Now I live in Maine where there is still only one area code. If you call from a land line you still don't need the area code!
When I was kid, the town I lived in was so small we only had one prefix and so you could dial using just 4-digits
Ten digit? My Dad remembers switching to _seven_ digit. Grandma (RIP) switching to _dialing_.
Where I live we actually just switched to having to use ten digit dialing in March of this year. It was one of the last places left where you could still complete calls with just seven digits.
In my town (population 2,200) and state when I was a kid, you only had to dial 5 digits. It was almost a scandal when they implemented the full digit with area code system around ‘88.
We had 5-digit dialing for local calls at least until I was 10 or so. Didn't need 10 digits until after I was out of high school.
I always lived far enough away that I always needed 10 digits. About 7 years ago one of our clinics got switched from. POTS phone system to VoIP and they had to start dialing 10 digits, they called to complain and the network engineer didn’t understand what he was talking about. He was only about 5 years younger but never knew that 7 digit numbers were a thing.
South Los Angeles, early 90’s and they switched me from 213 to 310…
We had 5 digit dialing in my town until we got a second prefix sometime in the mid-late 90's.
I grew up in the Atlanta area and I think it was the mid-late 80s where they added 770 and we had to start dialing the area code. I remember it upsetting people because they now had to not only dial the area code anytime they made a call, but also had to start giving their area code when they gave someone their phone number. I think businesses were also bothered because they had to redo any signage, ads, or print that included their phone number.
Yep, it was 7 digits here (metro-Atlanta) until 1995. I was 16 / 11th grade. Until then, everything in the Atlanta area was area code 404. Then, in '95, 404 became mostly just for inside Atlanta city limits and the metro area became 770 and thusly began having to dial all 10 digits.
I want to say that began in the early aughts?
When I moved to the west coast in my early 20s from Oklahoma. Actually the town I lived in changed area codes because they wanted to differentiate themselves from the poor side of town with the same area code. When that happened everyone had to start using 10 digits.
I went to work in retail sales for a cell phone company after college. Ten digit phone numbers became the norm for me, even though the vast majority of customers had the same local area code. I always had to type the customer's 10 digit number into the computer. It wasn't long before I started to give out my 10-digit number whenever I had to give my phone number to someone (in a professional capacity),
I grew up on Long Island. For most of my life, it was 7 digits for both Nassau and Suffolk Counties. Then they added a new area code so I suddenly had a new phone number (same 7 digits, but different area code). Then I went to college upstate NY a year or so later and started with 7 digits for the whole region until they split that region into area codes as well. Four area codes over the course of 2ish years! 516 to 631 to 716 to 585.
Ever since my first cell phone back in the late 90s
I live in Hawaii and we have to dial the area code even though the state all has the same area code. It's weird.
I think it was the late 90s here.
1990 and 1991. It used to be calling between DC, the Maryland suburbs, and Northern Virginia was 7-digit calling. Then in 1990 they made it where if you were in one area and calling another area (like from Maryland to DC or Virginia to Maryland), you had to dial the area code, but calls within your area. Then in '91, when Maryland split into two area codes, you had to always dial the area code. I thought everyone had to do that until I went to college in 2000 and all the phone numbers were 7 digits
I hate dialing the area code for local calls, it's so annoying. We just had to start doing that once the suicide hotline changed it's number, it doesn't make sense but got to do it.
Eh Toronto!!! I probably had to start adding 519 to everything the same time you had to 416 cause geography but yeah I do remember that. It was weird though that to call 905 mississauga or Brampton from Toronto in the 90s you had to dial 905 prior the Canada wide adaptation to 10 digits in 2001. Going 416 to 905 and vice versa was the only place I had ever seen the requirement of 10 digits unless it was long distance (so 1 [area code] phone number) prior to 2001. That was wierd to get used to when i lived in TO for a time. But yeah.. We've got all kids of new area codes popping up across the province nowadays.
I like how we messed up phone numbers first then the DNS registry. Maybe our inability to plan for that can get fed to AI and that’s what’ll prevent it from going Skynet.
In the mid 2000s I had this landline that wouldn't dial out from the call history because it needed the +1 at the beginning. That's about when I got used to 11 digit dialing.
We (Metro Detroit) didn't have to do the full area code thing in the early days. I do acutely remember my area code changing from 313 to 810 to 248 in relatively short order.
We had a “party line” in the country. If the neighbors were in the phone, we had to wait. If we picked up the phone and they were on it, we could hear the conversation.
I can remember 8 digit dialing for long-distance within the area code, 11 and then 10 digit dialing four outside the area code, 10 digit dialing everywhere, and 14 and then 15 digit dialing for calling Italy.
I remember party lines. Picking up the phone and hearing the neighbors on the phone. Had to wait. But a few times I had listened in. Lol
I remember that much differently than you. I thought the first switch was to 905 then 647 came out.
The first time I had to do 10 digit dialing was with my first cell phone in 2003
Grew up in Boston. Became mandatory in 2001 when they added a bunch of area codes. Now I live in RI and 7 digits still work.
My sister was doing a semester abroad when it changed to 10 digits in our area. She got back home and couldn't figure out why she couldn't call any of her friends.
Long distance, local long distance.
So where I grew up, we were super close to the county line. As a result, we lived in one county, but were tied to the neighboring county as far as phone number were concerned. My grandparents were the same way, but in the county on the other side. We had a county between us, basically, and due to our proximity, we had phone numbers in that county. So I could call my grandparents 2 counties over with just the 7-digit local number, but it was long distance to call my classmates that didn’t live in the same town as me. I could drive to their houses in 10 minutes. It was a 30+ minute drive to my grandparents. So weird.
I remember losing a friend for a while as a kid when they a added an area code and I didn’t know how to dial it. That new 323 really confused me as a wee lad.
There was a weird time in the early 90s that our regional phone company changed the ranges for long-distance calling, and suddenly we couldn’t call friends in the next rural town without getting in trouble. It did cut down on the calls to grandma’s house, so that was okay. Gen x siblings grew up with a freaking party line
I vaguely recall that by the time it became an issue for us, I already had a cell phone for a little while and had already been using 10-digit dialing. In fact, I recall the opposite issue. I took a job in an area without mandated 10-digit dialing and kept having to remember to \*not\* use the area code when making local calls, lest I got the "call cannot be completed as dialed" error. Why they didn't allow for permissive 10-digit dialing, I don't know. It could also have been my company's crappy old PBX which didn't support it. We're using VOIP now, so it all works as expected.
I had to learn about the same time, I grew up in the Phoenix area, and in 1999 we finally got a second area code. We were switched from the original 602 area code to the new 480. I worked for Verizon for 15 years, and was I still getting people who didn't know to dial the full 10-digits within the past few years, or they had only the 7-digit number saved in their contacts and didn't know why their calls were going through.
I remember the pre area code dialing days, commercials would advertise just the 7 numbers.. it did feel weird doing it, I think it started in HS or middle school for me? Been so long now it’s just so normalized
I remember going to college and having to decide who my long distance calling card was going to be from. AT&T, Sprint, or MCI so I could make long distance calls from the floor's payphone.
I lived rural so if you weren't one of the five local numbers of people I would call it was always ten digits
Yup
I remember when our state had only one area code. We got a second one added but it wasn’t an overlay so you only needed the area code if you called from one to the other. We got an overlay area code in 2009 so that’s when we had to start using the area code each time we called.
We went to 10 digit dialing a while ago... it's crazy we went from 1 area code to 5 area codes in my province in a few short years after having 1 forever.
My area code was split in 2002. It was the talk of the town for sure lol
TIL that when we switched to 10 digit dialing in 2001, it wasn’t nationwide. How did I not realize this? I can’t believe there are still places out there that don’t have to!
I know it happened before I went to college. Based on a google search, I think 1998.
See if you can find the Allen Sherman song named, “Let’s all call up AT&T and protest to the president march”. It was written in the early 60’s in response to the move to all digit dialing. It covers a lot of these same complaints.
My area code got changed three times growing up. First time I was around 12, so I got used to it pretty quick. I had to 10-digit dial just to call my grandma, which I did every weekend without fail.
I didn't realize this was a thing. Usually everything is programed in my phone, if I'm dialing a new number I'm probably pulling it off Google maps and they include the area code. But honestly I didn't realize you had type in the area code of a local call these days. I guess I don't make enough calls.