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Major Landline Phone Change Coming To Walnut Hill, Bratt, Molino
January 6, 2016
Frontier Communications landline users in Walnut Hill, Bratt and Molino will soon be required to use a new dialing method.
The new dialing procedure will require Molino and Walnut Hill callers to dial all local calls using 10 digits ( the area code plus the regular telephone number). Currently, these numbers are dialed using seven digits.
For example, when calling Northview High School, customers in the 327 and 587 phone exchanges now dial 327-6681, but with the change on February 1 will dial (850) 327-6681.
Beginning February 1 customers in Molino and Walnut Hill can start using the new 10-digit dialing procedure whenever they place a call from the 850 area code. However, during a two-month transitional phase, dialing just seven digits will continue to successfully complete customers’ calls.
As of April 1, the new 10-digit dialing procedure will be required. After this date, any calls placed without using the new 10-digit dialing procedure will not be completed, and a recording will instruct customers to hang up and dial again.
Frontier reminds customers to reprogram all services and automatic dialing equipment that are set to dial a seven-digit number to include the area code after February 1. Examples include life-safety systems or medical devices, PBXs, fax machines, Internet dial-up numbers, alarm and security systems/gates, speed dialers, mobile phone contact lists, call-forwarding settings and voicemail services.
Customers should also check their websites, business stationery, advertising materials, personal and business checks, contact information and personal/pet identification tags to ensure that the area code is included.
The change is due to the addition of a new telephone exchange number in McCullough, AL, and Pensacola that is owned by Cingular Wireless.
Comments
8 Responses to “Major Landline Phone Change Coming To Walnut Hill, Bratt, Molino”
People still use landlines?
Frontier is a landline. Other than having more numbers in an area, what do cell phones have to do with this? Since they are not 587 or 261 prefixes I don’t see how that effects landlines.
>>>So does this mean someone living in Molino dialing a Pensacola # will have long distance charges now ?
NO. Still local.
So does this mean someone living in Molino dialing a Pensacola # will have long distance charges now ?
Well – actually this is always done in anticipation of the area running out of local phone numbers. This way the available number of phone numbers will go up. These days it is due to the increasing number of cell phones in use in a specific area. Many areas have seen this – especially metropolitan areas – and it’s not unusual. With Frontier – I don’t imagine they were given a huge block of numbers from Bell in the first place so it’s amazing it has taken so long to do this. I guess if we stopped selling cell phones, land lines could stay the same…
The issue is that folks in Walnut Hill can make local calls to both Pensacola (in area code 850) and McCullough (in area code 251). Both area codes have the 261 prefix assigned. Because of that, Frontier’s switch in Walnut Hill needs to be able to distinguish between 850-261-1234 in Pensacola and 251-261-1234 in McCullough. Just dialing 7 digits doesn’t give the switch enough information to know which phone number was intended by the caller, thus the need to dial all 10 digits for local calls. Dialing 10 digits should not be a big deal anymore. After years of cell phone use, we should all be used to using people’s full telephone numbers by now. Plus, most of the country now has to dial 10 digits for local calls, so Walnut Hill and Molino may as well join the party.
The curious thing is that Frontier is making this change now. 850-261 has existed since the 1990s, and 251-261 has been around since 2003.
So, theres a NEW system and the current customers must change? Nice.
Cingular? I thought that was an old bell south wireless company that was sold to at&t years ago.