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I never realized anyone considered an area code prestigious.
It's definitely considered prestigious in New York City. It's iconic. I remember when I moved to the city and signed up for service, the phone-company employee told me: "I'm going to get your number now, but I have to warn you, it's probably going to be 646. That's what everybody's getting now. Sorry about that." When she came back, she sounded really excited and was like: "Great news -- this is your lucky day! We actually managed to get you a 212 number!"
Here's a short article that does a good job of conveying what 212 means in New York:
Francois, Funny Iowa had 3 area codes in 1947, and didn't get another area code until 1997. And odd that in 1950 other states right above and below Iowa's population had just one area code. And Indiana with 1.3 million more people in 1950 had only 2. Places I lived have used the same area code with changes. Except for San Antonio changing to 210 from 512.
From that article linked above. "sales of New York numbers beginning with 212 — and prices that range from $50 to $2,500". Further proof people are crazy. In Delaware they have a low digit obsession. It's a big thing to have a low number license plate, and people pay substantial to big money to get these low number plates. I think it's totally ridiculous, typically people with more money than brains and superficial to an extreme point that would care about a low number plate.
I read an article years ago about splits and overlays that said capital cities of states tend to keep the original area codes due to the government center there. I know it is the case with cities like Austin, Denver, Salt Lake City, Little Rock, Atlanta, and I'm sure many others.
Actually I believe it has more to do with major financial centers. The logic is that it costs large businesses more to change their numbers. Those cities were able to keep their number because they are the major metro area in their state / region, not because they are capitals. For example Sacramento had to change to 916, while San Francisco was able to keep the 415 area code. But really it has to do with lobbying. The biggest businesses with the most political clout, get to keep their numbers.
For those who are curious here is the original area code map. The most populated areas were assigned the lowest digits for faster dialing. Thats why the biggest cities had area codes with lots of 1s and 2s. The rural states with no major cities had lots of 7s, 8s, and 9s.
What's old is new again in Southern California. It looks like area code 323 is running out of phone numbers, so the proposal is to erase the current 213/323 boundary. 213 will be overlaid onto 323 by November 2017.
213 was the original area code in SoCal. 323 was split from 213 in June 1998.
I personally think splits are more appropriate for geographically larger area codes that have large amounts of rural area, splitting the urban and rural portions.
For geographically smaller area codes that are mostly urban, overlays are more appropriate, since a split would create area codes that are too small in geographic area and would not provide much relief.
I personally think splits are more appropriate for geographically larger area codes that have large amounts of rural area, splitting the urban and rural portions.
For geographically smaller area codes that are mostly urban, overlays are more appropriate, since a split would create area codes that are too small in geographic area and would not provide much relief.
Interestingly, for the Phoenix area, the original plan was to overlay all of Area Code 602 with 480, however, at the time there was a lot of opposition to an overlay plan, with surveys showing that most Phoenix area residents preferred a geographic split of the metro area. This led to the three-way geographic split of the Phoenix metro area, with most of the City of Phoenix itself keeping Area Code 602, the East Valley (Mesa, Chandler, Gilbert, Queen Creek, Tempe, Scottsdale, parts of Pinal County, the Phoenix neighborhood of Ahwatukee, and some parts of northeastern Phoenix) getting 480, and the West Valley (most of Glendale, Peoria, and Buckeye, all of Surprise, Avondale, Goodyear, Litchfield Park, El Mirage, the Sun Cities, and Tolleson, and parts of west Phoenix) getting 623. This leaves us as one of the few major cities that still hasn't been overlaid.
I'd be willing to bet if it were to happen today instead of back in 1999, there would be much less resistance to an overlay code. Area Codes 602 and 480 are currently predicted to be exhausted by 2020, so an overlay in the Phoenix area is likely to occur soon, either as two individual overlay codes or as a single overlay code for both areas. Another form of overlay that shouldn't be ruled out is a boundary extension of Area Code 623 to cover the 602 and 480 areas, since 623 has a lot of spare capacity and is not expected to be exhausted until at least 2046.
To answer the OP's question, I prefer splits to overlays, because I like having a unique geographic link to an area code.
I know that about 15-20 years ago or so, there was a huge surge of new phone numbers being assigned, due first to fax machines and then to cell phones. I wonder, though, if this is cooling off nowadays? E-mail has taken a huge dent out of faxing, and landlines are starting to disappear as cell phones become people's only phones. It seems that, in the short term at least, we won't need nearly as many new phone numbers as we once did.
To answer the OP's question, I prefer splits to overlays, because I like having a unique geographic link to an area code.
I know that about 15-20 years ago or so, there was a huge surge of new phone numbers being assigned, due first to fax machines and then to cell phones. I wonder, though, if this is cooling off nowadays? E-mail has taken a huge dent out of faxing, and landlines are starting to disappear as cell phones become people's only phones. It seems that, in the short term at least, we won't need nearly as many new phone numbers as we once did.
On the other hand there will still be prefix blocks assigned to landline carriers which cannot be reassigned to cell carriers as long as even ONE number is assigned from that prefix (or part of the prefix as described below) to a landline. (A not-as-often-cited reason for the area code surge in the late '90s is that's when competition for landline phone service grew, and each provider had to have their own prefix blog for each rate center even if only a fraction of the 10,000 numbers available were actually assigned. That was relieved with "number pooling" which allowed a prefix to be split between multiple carriers in an area.)
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