Some years ago, in Italy, we were forced to dial the local area code to make local calls. I'm living in a small village, and we have 5 digit phone numbers, and after this "modern" decision I had to dial a 9 digit number to call my cousin that lives 50 meters away.
Why did they do that? What they said is that it was due to the liberalization of landline phone system, to help new operators, blah blah blah... I just believe they did that because they didn't want to upgrade all peripheric analog switches to digital ones...and thought it was more convenient to gather every call to long distance exchange switches and then manage there the calls...but my opinion on this matter ain't the point of this post.
Since I had some time to revamp my asterisk calling box, I thought it was a good thing (tm) to downgrade home phones back to horse sense standards, suggesting that every phone should work more or less like this: direct dial for local numbers, dial 0 for long distance, and dial 00 for international calls.
I'm not going to argue about the trivial asterisk configuration, but I'm witnessing the feel I am having when calling my close parties. Since when we switched to the 0+prefix+local to call neighbors I personally lost the appeal to call local parties at home, and was involuntarily led calling them with/to cell phone. While I still wonder why that happened I think it was maybe because that 0+prefix inconsciously made me think that I was calling long distance, so a cell call was worth to be done instead. hmm...did smart telco marketeers thought to that too? Smart guys eh? Who knows, could be.
However it is, however it was...now I somehow feel more inclined to call locals with my landline telephone...and I do! So, welcome back old days, thank you asterisk and welcome back public switched telephone network, we missed you :-)
Why did they do that? What they said is that it was due to the liberalization of landline phone system, to help new operators, blah blah blah... I just believe they did that because they didn't want to upgrade all peripheric analog switches to digital ones...and thought it was more convenient to gather every call to long distance exchange switches and then manage there the calls...but my opinion on this matter ain't the point of this post.
Since I had some time to revamp my asterisk calling box, I thought it was a good thing (tm) to downgrade home phones back to horse sense standards, suggesting that every phone should work more or less like this: direct dial for local numbers, dial 0 for long distance, and dial 00 for international calls.
I'm not going to argue about the trivial asterisk configuration, but I'm witnessing the feel I am having when calling my close parties. Since when we switched to the 0+prefix+local to call neighbors I personally lost the appeal to call local parties at home, and was involuntarily led calling them with/to cell phone. While I still wonder why that happened I think it was maybe because that 0+prefix inconsciously made me think that I was calling long distance, so a cell call was worth to be done instead. hmm...did smart telco marketeers thought to that too? Smart guys eh? Who knows, could be.
However it is, however it was...now I somehow feel more inclined to call locals with my landline telephone...and I do! So, welcome back old days, thank you asterisk and welcome back public switched telephone network, we missed you :-)
2 comments:
not so many years ago, i think..
1998-1999...time flies!
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