I believe that the Oct. 14 headline asserting that telephone area-code “overlay” is no longer a dirty word, and that 847 users are “resigned” to 11-digit dialing, is totally false. I don’t know anyone who thinks that it is an acceptable situation to have to dial 11 digits to call across the street.
Aside from forcing the phone companies to stop holding back thousands of phone numbers for business clients, it seems a simpler and less invasive solution would be to have all cellular phones and beepers changed to new area codes. Not only would it be helpful for people to know that they were calling those devices, it would allow regular phones to keep their area codes for many years to come.
As a user of cellular phones and beepers, I’d gladly take a few minutes to have them reprogrammed if it meant keeping the current system. Besides, people change cellular systems more often, requiring them to get new numbers, far more often than people change home or business phone numbers.
Can’t anything in government or big business affecting our daily lives be solved with commonsense solutions anymore?
