[12490] in Commercialization & Privatization of the Internet
Re: About the creation of new 3-letter domain(s)
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Alan Barrett)
Thu May 19 08:01:03 1994
Date: Thu, 19 May 1994 09:52:54 +0200 (GMT+0200)
From: Alan Barrett <barrett@daisy.ee.und.ac.za>
To: Barry Shein <bzs@world.std.com>
Cc: com-priv@psi.com
In-Reply-To: <199405190401.AA14391@world.std.com>
Barry Shein said:
> So unless someone knows of a phone numbering convention out there that
> uses three digits at the other end then howsabout only one end of the
> tuple can be exactly three digits and that's the country code. And you
> read from that end.
Around here, I don't think there's any official standard way of grouping
the digits.
I know plenty of six-digit phone numbers that are sometimes written
XX-XXXX, and sometimes XXX-XXX. Sometimes the owners of the phone
numbers choose to write them in some other way, like XX-XX-XX,
especially if doing so highlights patterns that make the numbers easier
to remember. (I assume that we care about how humans write the numbers,
not about how the telco equipment happens to be implemented.)
Until a couple of years ago, phone numbers in the rural area where my
parents lived were exactly three digits, after a three-digit exchange
code. Then they inserted "91" at the front of everybody's number, so
now it's 91-XXX instead of just XXX.
I don't believe that it's reasonable for the net to dictate to the
telcos of the world/galaxy/universe that "thou shalt not implement a
numbering scheme in which a group of three digits appears at the end of
a number".
--apb
Alan Barrett, Dept. of Electronic Eng., Univ. of Natal, Durban, South Africa
RFC822: barrett@ee.und.ac.za
