"Joe" wrote in message
...
On 06/01/2015 02:45 AM, wrote:
These seemed to make it easier to remember phone numbers, and the words
were usually simple words that were easy to remember. The word was
assigned by the phone company. It seems they stopped doing this around
the mid 1960's. I wonder why they stopped?

Anyone know the reason?

Maybe the *******s wanted to charge extra for using a word prefix but the
FCC wouldn't let them?

Probably ran out of 2 letter combos that made sense as part of a larger
word. "KK" or "WX" would be hard to assign. In addition, 3 letters map
into 1 number, adding to the limitation on assignable prefixes like
"Butterfield" or "Teasdale". A while back all area codes had a 0 in the
second slot and all toll-free numbers began with 800. Not anymore. You
also used to be able to connect just dialing the number without any area
code - which was assumed.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_A...ze_expansio n

Lays out what happens if we run out of telephone numbers in the XXX-XXX-XXXX
format. Before anyone has a canary, there are still places that do things
the old way and you can dial a neighbor with only 7 digits.

--
Bobby G.