For some reason my thoughts strayed to this today...
How are phone numbers registered and assigned to a particular phone line?
Assume the format for a phone number is the standard USA phone number:
( [3-digit-area code] ) [3-digit-number] - [4-digit-number]
Obviously area codes are assigned by some governing board. But what about the rest of the numbers? It is noticeable that usually there are a certain set of 3-digit-numbers that usually exist in a single area. For example in my area the common 3-digit-numbers are 855, 858, 463, and 550 (858 is pretty new compared to the other three).
Now, obviously different customers use different phone services, therefore there is no way a phone service could decide the 3-digit-numbers that get used in a specific area. That would have to be done by the governing board as well or maybe some contracting company bought a set of numbers and leases them for use in a specific area.
That then leaves the last 4-digit-number of each number.
Now, it is very possible that in these ordinary phone numbers, a governing board could very easily dedicate certain numbers to certain areas and that would be that, but what about certain companies that have numbers like:
1-800-CALL-ATT
And other creative numbers like that. Would those have to be seperately registered and paid for like a webdomain of sorts in order to have a special number like that?
it's weird having stuff like this on your mind....