The Absent Uncle: The evolution of phone numbers

It would seem that I have gotten on a fixation about phones; the old ways to use them, complaining about how they are abused by robo-dialers today, and overall, my observation of the intrusion into our everyday life.

What I would like to do today, however, is to complement the way the industry has evolved by making it as simple as possible to remember our forgettable phone number contacts. 

Pretty much all of us have access to a smart phone today. It has become a necessity in everyday life. And a part of that is the number each of us is associated with. Like your Social Security number – it almost is a lifetime assignment.

Certainly, it was not like that in the beginning. The word and practice of “portability” changed all of that.   

It used to be that our phone number, be it the landline (home phone) and even the early cell phones were attached to the three-digit area code of your residence. Where you lived defined your phone number. So long as you didn’t move, that number was yours. 

But bit by bit, that strict rule broke down. More numbers were needed in certain areas so new area codes were assigned. My understanding of the physical technology challenge was that the entire system had to be updated to handle the mixed area codes within the geographical area to eliminate any “long distance” charges being assessed and then – “poof” – long distance charges disappeared. 

Technology – who really needs to understand it to benefit from it?

So, over a relatively short period of time that number tied to geography disappeared. Portability happened. At first, it seemed it was so you could change from one telephone company to another without having to change numbers – a real sales advantage for competitors looking to grow. And then it just became universal – no problem moving, no problem changing companies, your number is your number.  Forever?

That is what it seems like.  I will use our son as an example. After some amount of negotiation, rule setting, and deciding on a first phone we could agree on price and feature-wise, he received his first phone in Kansas around the year 2002. About the time this evolution of phone numbers started. 

He has that same number today after living in five different states, traveling internationally for school and work and will probably be his only number for his personal use. Sorry it could not have been a catchy number; it is pretty plain. He has had numbers for companies he has worked for and carried an extra phone until technology caught up and allowed both numbers on the same phone to work. (I still don’t understand that one!)  

The main benefit today, as I see it, is that our phone contact list doesn’t have all the scratch outs and erasures of the old paper address book or rolodex (that today most of us don’t maintain and struggled to do so in the old days). We just copy and download the information as we regretfully switch actual phones as we “upgrade”. 

Technology, just accept it and remember your number.