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[KBCraig]

Yeah, in the old days phones sometimes were "party lines" where more than one family shared a phone line to save on costs. My grandparents had a phone on a party line in the 1970s for years...until the phone company phased them out.

When we moved to a small town in Arkansas in 1973, my parents opted to pay extra to not be on a party line. Of course, we were still on a party line leg of the circuit, so we paid extra to not be able to listen in, but we still couldn't make a phone call, nor receive one, if one of the people on the party line was using the phone.

In 1973, we only had to dial 3 digits to make a local call. Then they upped it to the last four, then the last five, then seven digits, and now they have to use full 10-digit dialing.

And in all that time, other than the area code changing, all the numbers in that town are only distinguished by the last three digits: 870-389-6xxx.

[sanddunerider]

i think  you will find that true in most small towns.. mine is

785-828-3XXX

my folks and sister   785-733-2XXX

neighboring small towns:   549-5XXX
                                         665-7XXX
                                         528-5XXX

[KBCraig]

The crazy thing is that thanks to local telcos being regulated, rather than a free market, my mother has to pay long distance to call her church, which is just 4 miles from her house.

I'm just 90 miles from there, but my local access area includes my entire county, and most of two neighboring counties, three different area codes, and towns up to 35 miles away.

Not that I ever use long distance calling. We only have a landline for my wife's business phone, and the DSL connection. All our personal calls (and any business calls outside the local area) are made with cell phones.

[sanddunerider]

KB,  same thing here. I live in the country,, I have a land line for fax and DSL...  ALL other calls are cell phone.

[rubedugans]

I live smack dab in the middle of the suburbs, and cannot call 5 miles away without long distance on the land line. I cannot wait to find a GOOD internet provider that needs no land line...any suggestions?

[sanddunerider]

I have not heard of any GOOD wireless internet provider..  BUT I keep hoping.... You know it can be done.!

[thelarsonsix]

I live smack dab in the middle of the suburbs, and cannot call 5 miles away without long distance on the land line. I cannot wait to find a GOOD internet provider that needs no land line...any suggestions?

What are you wanting? VOIP for phone or just an internet connection? I'm guessing you live in the GTE, Verizion, CenturyTel now
Century Link area since I thought almost all of the rest of St Louis that's AT&T can call locally. Not sure about the 636/314 area code split though.

[rubedugans]

Scary thelarson, you are pretty familiar with my situation!I a=cannot even call all 636, only a few municipalities here and a few points west. I am not too pleased with Centurylink! (Are you in StL?)

[thelarsonsix]

We had a party line until about '95 or so. We also only had to dial the last 4 digits, and the numbers were all 793-2xxx(south and east of town) or 793-6xxx (north and west of town). We also could not call any other exchange without a toll charge. Anyone remember how the old wall phones would vibrate but not ring when one of the other parties was getting a call? Once it stopped you knew it time to pick up and eavesdrop. One other peculiar thing we didn't have ANI (any other telephone people on here will know what that means) so when you made a long distance call, the operator would come on and ask "number please" wanting to know where you were calling from so you could get billed accordingly. Now if that wasn't hard to defeat...always kept a phone book handy.

[thelarsonsix]

Scary thelarson, you are pretty familiar with my situation!I a=cannot even call all 636, only a few municipalities here and a few points west. I am not too pleased with Centurylink! (Are you in StL?)

No, but I've worked up there fairly often. (I'm a repairman with AT&T)

[thelarsonsix]

Rube, have you asked Century Link if they will sell you dry loop dsl?