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Technology Stocks : COMS & the Ghost of USRX w/ other STUFF -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: David Lawrence who wrote (18318)	2/26/1999 8:55:00 AM
From: DMaA	Respond to of 22053

The Kennedy Space Center Acquires A New Area Code: 3-2-1, as in Blast Off By STEPHANIE N. MEHTA Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL [Story resonates with me since we just got new area codes here] Robert Osband is counting down the days until Brevard County, Fla., gets a new area code. That's because Mr. Osband, a space-program buff, successfully lobbied for the nation's first "vanity" area code for the communities surrounding the Kennedy Space Center. The digits: 3-2-1. The new number, which is to be launched later this year, has been embraced by central Florida residents and business owners, despite certain inconveniences , like having to print up new business cards. "We were all secretly rooting for this new area code," says Bruce Buckingham, in a familiar, authoritative voice. Mr. Buckingham, a spokesman for NASA at the Kennedy Space Center, does the countdowns for the Space Shuttle. Area codes have always been status symbols of sorts. The numbering plan was created by AT&T Corp. in the 1940s as an internal numbering system to help telephone operators route long-distance calls, according to Sheldon Hochheiser, AT&T's corporate historian. Later, the phone giant used the system to allow customers to make long-distance calls without operator assistance. The cities that got the most calls got the best digits. New York City was given 212 because that was the easiest, fastest code to dial on an old rotary phone. Similarly, Los Angeles ended up with the easy-to-spin 213. Others were consigned to the telephone equivalent of Siberia: Alaskans, for example, had to live with 907. AT&T successfully oversaw the nation's area codes until the company was broken up by the Justice Department in 1984. The task then shifted to Bellcore, a research-and-development outfit then owned by the Baby Bells. As new competitors began to transform the phone industry, however, some grew increasingly edgy over the role of the local phone companies in the delegation of new area codes. Eventually the process was opened up to competitive bidding. Last year, a unit of Lockheed Martin Corp., the defense contractor, became the administrator of the North American Numbering Plan. . . .