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Overview of the 555-XXXX phone number

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Re: Overview of the 555-XXXX phone number

#71

Post by nly »

Magicstatic wrote: post #5
mathgorges wrote: post #3

Very fun article, thanks for sharing :) I think the current title ‘You could own a 555-XXXX phone number but Verizon’s charged you $2,500 to use it’ doesn’t capture how bad the deal was —- here’s the relevant quote from the article > Verizon was notorious for charging high fees to establish service to 555 numbers, charging $2,500 for each area code that you wanted your 555 number to be routed in.

This is the craziest part of the whole article - imagine you wanted to own something like "555-FOOD" - to have this vanity number work in every area code, you'd be looking at hundreds of thousands of dollars (annually?) if you used Verizon to route the calls

Sounds cheap to me to be honest.

Re: Overview of the 555-XXXX phone number

#73

Post by archi42 »

s1mon wrote: post #31
s1mon wrote: post #26

I love how it isn’t until the third paragraph that the post mentions what country 555-XXXX numbers are relevant to. This is the World Wide Web folks, not the USA web. The whole blog and offering seems US centric, to the point where I’m assuming it might not work very well at all for people outside of the North American Numbering plan area. We wouldn’t know because they seem to assume that the only people who are goin…

Ok, a couple of down votes on this. I’m curious why. I was born and have lived almost all of my life in the US. I get tired of provincial web sites assuming that any random person who stumbles upon it will only be from the US, or even more insane, just from the local area. ( e.g. a restaurant site which just has a street address, or a newspaper site which assumes I know which Springfield it’s about)

The 555 is a common trope in US movies and TV shows[0]. I always thought those are non-assignable in the US (obviously I was wrong), but it's fair to assume this trope to be well known.

If you didn't know that, you're one of today's lucky 10000 :)

[0] https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/FiveFiveFive

[1] https://xkcd.com/1053/

Re: Overview of the 555-XXXX phone number

#74

Post by denlekke »

misnome wrote: post #69
mynameisvlad wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Paying X per area code is justified, nobody is arguing against that. Paying $2500 per area code is unreasonable, as, like I said, there is nothing inherently special about 206-555-1234 vs 206-689-5312.

And as the other poster said, there is. Even the article points out that it was difficult and expensive to maintain, why is it unreasonable to charge proportionally to that, or indeed whatever the small number of people wanting it will actually pay?

I found the article light on details about what exactly needs to happen and why Verizon charges the fee. Would Verizon charge 2,500$ for me to get a 1 area code 555 number for my cell phone for instance? For multiple area codes, why is it difficult to route more than one number to a secondary number ? Is it passing along the origin area code data that requires different hardware or software than normal numbers ? Etc …

Re: Overview of the 555-XXXX phone number

#75

Post by iso1631 »

once_inc wrote: post #72

Is there also an overview of all 555-XXXX phone numbers used in movies and what they are for? 555-0001 is used in Die Hard With a Vengeance for instance. Would be fun to see if any of the numbers are used more or less often.

https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/FiveFiveFive (nsfw) has a good list

Re: Overview of the 555-XXXX phone number

#76

Post by iso1631 »

e3bc54b2 wrote: post #42
WalterBright wrote: post #34

Every time I see a 555 number in a movie, I'm reminded that it's a movie and am dropped out of immersion. So what if the movies use a real number? They could just sign up for a number, use it, and no harm done. Or just use 867-5309. Wherever that number goes, the person there is expecting it.

For what its worth, Scrubs did put a real number in one of their episodes. They had a real phone that went around being answered by cast & crew and everyone had a blast. They remember it quite fondly. 2000s were a different time.

Accidentally had my (desk) phone number go out on a TV program which typically gets around 100k viewers (was burnt into a screen in the background of an interview) earlier this year. Very disappointed than nobody phoned it.

Re: Overview of the 555-XXXX phone number

#77

Post by iso1631 »

nopenopenopeno wrote: post #46
WalterBright wrote: post #34

Every time I see a 555 number in a movie, I'm reminded that it's a movie and am dropped out of immersion. So what if the movies use a real number? They could just sign up for a number, use it, and no harm done. Or just use 867-5309. Wherever that number goes, the person there is expecting it.

> Every time I see a 555 number in a movie, I'm reminded that it's a movie and am dropped out of immersion. What about a cut? A camera zoom? A title screen? Sub-titles? I am intrigued about how you experience films.

We see real life through a lens, we don't see real life with 555 numbers

Re: Overview of the 555-XXXX phone number

#79

Post by JumpCrisscross »

im3w1l wrote: post #39
boilerupnc wrote: post #36

Related: Here’s a number many wish they didn’t have. 867-5309 [0] [0] https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/867-5309-jenny/

What does it mean that many wish they didn't have it? How do multiple have the same number? Edit: And in case you thought I misinterpreted him the article says "The biggest complaints about the new phone exchange come from Nina Clemente '03 and Jahanaz Mirza '03, the two students with the telephone number 867-5309." Anyway if I had that number I would try to sell it to only fans or something like that lmao.

> How do multiple have the same number?

Up to 335 people have that number [1].

[1] https://www.twilio.com/docs/glossary/north-american-area-cod...

Re: Overview of the 555-XXXX phone number

#80

Post by autoexec »

WalterBright wrote: post #34

Every time I see a 555 number in a movie, I'm reminded that it's a movie and am dropped out of immersion. So what if the movies use a real number? They could just sign up for a number, use it, and no harm done. Or just use 867-5309. Wherever that number goes, the person there is expecting it.

> Or just use 867-5309. Wherever that number goes, the person there is expecting it.

As soon as everyone switched to all use 867-5309 you'd have the exact same problem. You'd learn to recognize it immediately and all immersion would be lost.

I agree it's annoying and the whole fake phone number thing should die. For all the money they waste making and advertising movies and TV shows they can fork over the money for a phone line in the appropriate area code and if people call it they can harvest the cell phone numbers for spam and market research or something.

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