Comments on: Major Landline Phone Change Coming To Walnut Hill, Bratt, Molino

By: Dt

Dt — Thu, 07 Jan 2016 22:28:54 +0000

People still use landlines?

By: Jane

Jane — Thu, 07 Jan 2016 09:34:19 +0000

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.

By: William

William — Wed, 06 Jan 2016 20:06:14 +0000

>>>So does this mean someone living in Molino dialing a Pensacola # will have long distance charges now ?

NO. Still local.

By: Debbie

Debbie — Wed, 06 Jan 2016 20:02:40 +0000

So does this mean someone living in Molino dialing a Pensacola # will have long distance charges now ?

By: Tim

Tim — Wed, 06 Jan 2016 18:06:57 +0000

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…

By: Bryan Bethea

Bryan Bethea — Wed, 06 Jan 2016 17:14:34 +0000

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.

By: Puddin

Puddin — Wed, 06 Jan 2016 15:29:31 +0000

So, theres a NEW system and the current customers must change? Nice.

By: Sam

Sam — Wed, 06 Jan 2016 12:00:58 +0000

Cingular? I thought that was an old bell south wireless company that was sold to at&t years ago.