Hacker News Reader

Comment by geoduck14 | Hacker News Reader

Oh hey! I have experience with this! I used to analyze data for a call center. We had a law that prevented us from calling people at night.

This is hard because of the following reasons: Zip codes and time zones don't align well (looking at you, West Florida!)

Area codes and zip codes don't align well

Area codes and time zones don't align well

People move!

View on HN

People move is a big one. Since smartphones became popular, I’ve noticed that people tend to keep the same phone number from where they got their first phone number. So I will receive calls from all over the place, except they really are all local calls from people that now live in my town. So when I see that a call is from Wisconsin, that is meaningless since it could be from someone living down the street.

Yeah, I've moved a couple of times and still have the phone number I got in the second state I lived in. The nice thing is that, for the most part, the only people calling me from that state's area code are robocallers who are spoofing what they hope is my local area code. I very rarely answer unknown numbers anyway, but seeing these kinds of area codes on my caller ID almost guarantee it's a spam call.

And now I know that if I get a call from my numbers zipcode and I don't have them added it's a robocall!

When I left a previous state, I paid to port the local area code number away from (major cell carrier) over to Google Voice (I've had this number some 20 years now). Many of the folks I work with (tech sector) have cell numbers from different states, having moved into this state only for work and some day plan to leave/return to their original home.

Area codes mean little in the mobile phone era. Just tells you where a person lived when they were a teenager or otherwise first got their own phone.

Not in Germany. The mobile network has distinct numbers. You can have a land line number mapped to a cellphone, but it's rare these days, don't know anybody who does this. It was popular back when calling cellphones was more expensive than land lines.

"Area" codes in German cellphones were never the area but the cellphone provider. But that became none sense, when you could move your number to any other cellphone provider like I did. I own the same cell phone number since 1998 and was with almost any of the cellphone providers (except QUAM and E-Plus).

Actual area codes in Germany are always area codes. I doesn't matter if they are mapped to the cellphone or to SIP. When you make an address change, then your area code changes. Happened to my area code. But moved it to a friends house in the same area, so that I can keep it (illegally). Because I "own" that number as well since about 1998.

You can't just port the number to a VoIP provider and keep it regardless of location?

I work for a VoIP provider so when I got rid of my secondary phone I just ported it to my system and now I can do whatever I want with it.

A bunch of my clients have numbers from all over the state or even the country that route in to their one actual office.

It seems really stupid for that to be legally prohibited.

Yes, according to the rules of Bundesnetzagentur, the SIP provider needs to give you a new phone number from the within the new area, when you give them the new address. Also for SIP providers the rule is, the area code is only for the customers in which area they are.

So what do companies do that serve wider areas spanning multiple area codes?

I'm based in Northeast Ohio, so a the majority of my clients are in the Cleveland/Akron/Canton metro area. Those who do on-site services, say a septic system maintenance company or a garage door repair company, will commonly have phone numbers that are local to each of the major suburbs they target. Some of this is a legacy from the old days where people cared about "long distance" calling versus local but I still have these kinds of companies ordering new local numbers in various suburbs to this day just for marketing purposes because a local number makes some people feel better about a company.

Is that just not a thing in Germany? So companies can only have a local phone number in areas where they have an actual physical address?

Companies in Germany mostly have a local number from the area where they are physically located. If a company has multiple sites around the country, they mostly use a number within their HQ area or they get a service/freephone number redirecting to their call center.

Bundesnetzagentur (the regulatory agency for telecommunication, electricity, gas, etc.) has very strict rules which are enforced and the fines can be very expensive, so nobody tries to find a loophole in the system.

How strict are they? Oh boy, they can be worse then your worst nightmare. About 10-15 years ago, a few friends noticed stuff going missing from the shed (it was beer, so it was very serious). They ordered and installed a cheap wireless camera from china and started recording. A few days later they got a letter from Bundesnetzagentur stating they use a restricted frequency and have to stop immediately or they will be fined X000€ (don't remember the exact amount, but it was four figures so a lot of money for students. Also, pretty high for a first offense). Yes, it was the camera which was using some weird frequency band. But how did the Bundesnetzagentur found them? They were wardriving around the city and checking for unusual signals. Literally a few guys in a van filled with RF equipment driving through the city and looking for suspicious stuff [0].

They probably were driving their laps and checking security, since we have a few high profile institutions here, but got a few drunken university guys with a cheap webcam from the internet.

[0] https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bundesnetzagentur#/media/Datei...

I moved away from Germany and I still have a German landline number via SIP. Are you saying this is illegal?

If you inform your SIP provider about your new address, then they need to give you a new number. If you number has the "area" code specially for SIP, then it is not a problem. But if you have an actual area code, then this is not allowed according to the rules of Bundesnetzagentur.

Good to know. They certainly don't seem to be super eager to enforce this, since I have been using it from a foreign IP address and with a foreign billing address for a long time. Maybe there is a field for physical address that I should have updated...

Country codes still matter, for the most part.

In the EU pretty much every nation has their own country code. Which means 555-555-5555 will map differently depending on the nation you are in.

And maybe for the EU, knowing what nation a person resides in gives you some idea of their time zone. The US spans 6 time zones (technically 9 if you count non-state territories). Russia spans 11.

There is only one time zone in finland

But that Finnish phone number could belong to someone in England.

Who was vacationing in Thailand.

I have a north Texas area code but live on the west coast again, and the number of idiot robo-dialers I get calling me early in the morning is frustrating.

My phone is now on Do Not Disturb most of the time because of these. Even with the do not call list, Hiya, and Nomorobo.

Recently started using RoboKiller and it's reduced these to a near zero level.

While I understand your argument, there is only one timezone in Finnland and in my understanding he was calling land lines. So all the numbers should end in Finnland. Of course it can happen that a number is forwarded but then I see no blame with the author.

Oh, and don't forget, phones lines can be forwarded elsewhere as well. (hopefully the law's text said "area code time zone", and had some wording against tomfoolery like making a forwarding service that sent calls wherever)

How many hours off can you be with area codes or zip codes? I would have thought that might be about an hour not really more than that.

There is no difference between mobile and land line numbers in North America. There's no national "mobile only" prefix (like in many EU countries), and no "your number changes if you move to a new location": phone numbers are owned by carriers, and you get whatever number your local carrier branch was allocated (which will have the local area code). That's it, the idea that "area codes" are actually location indicators is basically an anachronism from the land line days.

If someone has a mobile phone, which is everyone, and that phone has a Toronto number because they bought the phone plan when they lived in Toronto, then they move to Vancouver, they get to keep their number as long as they stay with their carrier. If you then look at that number and go "the area code is Toronto, 8am is an acceptable time to call that number", now you're calling someone at 5am.

Area codes in North America, by and large, only tells you which city the carrier's branch was located when the phone plan got set up. Canada and the US are huge countries made of mostly empty space with pockets of life spaced far, far apart, and people move from pocket to pocket all the time.

>phone numbers are owned by carriers

>they get to keep their number as long as they stay with their carrier.

You can move phone numbers between carriers.

I was about to say, since 2003 in the US wireless number portability is required. You as a consumer have a right to port your number from one carrier to another, they're only supposed to be able to charge fees related to their costs which is usually $0.

https://www.fcc.gov/general/wireless-local-number-portabilit...

There's more than just the US in North America =)

Now with services such as TextNow, when you sign up for the number they simply let you choose whatever area code you'd like.

FWIW, Cell carriers will do this as well. They don't require you to take a local number when signing up for service.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com