From: ahk@chinet.com   
      
   mroberds@att.net wrote:   
   >hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com wrote:   
   >>On Wednesday, August 27, 2014 5:55:34 PM UTC-4, mrob...@att.net wrote:   
      
   >>>Was it a 7-digit or 10-digit phone number?   
      
   >>It is an 800 number.  Dialed 10 digits.   
      
   >Interesting.  Were you close enough to a border that your phone might   
   >have been talking to a tower in another state?   
      
   That issue never affected cell phones.   
      
   >I didn't think this mattered anymore for toll-free numbers, but I recall   
   >when companies used to advertise a 1-800 number for all states but the   
   >one where they were located, and then either a regular phone number or a   
   >different 1-800 number for use within their state only.  I assume this   
   >was an attempt to save money, or possibly a consequence of how long   
   >distance calls used to work.   
      
   Neither. AT&T was subject to different long distance tariffs for   
   in state versus out of state and international calls. So for the convenience   
   of AT&T's billing and ignoring the additional advertising cost to companies   
   trying to do business in multiple states (both of which are in the same   
   market for television advertising purposes), AT&T forced subscribers to   
   have different toll-free numbers for in-state and out-of-state calls   
   (and international calls to the extent they could be dialed from Canada).   
      
   I'm sure there could have been a programming solution to rate calls   
   against different tariffs at the same time, but AT&T didn't do it that way.   
      
   I used to think AT&T re-used in-state toll free numbers in different parts   
   of the country at the same time, but I don't believe that was ever the case.   
      
   >Perhaps NJT thinks it is economical to have a toll-free number that only   
   >works from within New Jersey (if such a thing still exists), and your   
   >phone happened to be "out of state" for them.   
      
   Given that companies pay fractions of a cent per minute on long distance,   
   and these days pay the same for both inward and outward, I'm sure that   
   they haven't.   
      
   That's something you would never want to do anyway if you're expecting   
   most of your calls to come from cell phones. After all, a cell phone   
   may be rated anywhere at all, and receiving a call from a cell phone is   
   one of the few instances in which a cell phone's rating point could be   
   used for rating a call.   
      
   Nearly no cell phone subscriber knows this, but cell phones have rating   
   points, an assignment to a land line central office strictly for the   
   purpose of rating the distance portion of a long-distance call. The   
   rating point is nothing to do with the address to which the bill is sent   
   nor any address used for 911 purposes. It doesn't even have to do with   
   area code used for land lines, as cell phone prefixes are associated with   
   any area code in use in a metropolitan area, regardless of any boundaries   
   once used for land line prefixes. They started doing this when they   
   acknowledged how stupid it had been to change cell phone telephone numbers   
   to reflect area code splits, and then fail to reclaim the prefix for   
   future assignments.   
      
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