Brief by Central Staff
Communications – September 1995 – Colorado Central Magazine
They’ve got the numbers, anyway
In the big picture, America is running out of toll-free 800 numbers, so soon there will be another toll-free prefix: 888.
On our scale, U.S. West has assigned Salida (formerly limited to just 539) two new telephone prefixes: 530 for regular phones and 221 for cellular phones.
Among other things, this means that Salidans will soon have to provide more digits than just “5345” when someone asks “What’s your phone number?”.
However, just having more numbers doesn’t mean that there will be lines for them. A plan to provide Internet access from Salida fell through last spring when U.S. West couldn’t provide enough telephone lines.
And we just talked to Dave Ward, who got a phone number for his new business venture, Road House Music. “But all it does is ring my home phone. Getting a new line from US West is impossible.”
Next year, Colorado will allow competition for local telephone service, so things might improve then. Then again, things could get worse, though it’s hard to imagine how.