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Comment by greenyoda | Hacker News Reader

> (914) 232-9901: pleasant hills DMS 100

In the NYC vicinity, dialing the -9901 suffix on many phone exchanges will give you a recorded message identifying the central office you reached. For example, if you call (212) 736-9901, it tells you that the switch is on West 36th Street[1] and a list of area codes/prefixes it serves. Amusingly, the switch still identifies itself as "Bell Atlantic", which is what the local Regional Bell Operating Company was called before it became "Verizon" in 2000 (it was also briefly "NYNEX").[2]

[1] This building, apparently: https://skyscraperpage.com/cities/?buildingID=69989

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Verizon_Communications#Bell_At...

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NYNEX: just clicked that's what Phantom Phreak from Hackers was on about: "the Phantom Phreak, king of NYNEX". And looking at the dates, seems to gel... took me that long to figure out what was said there!

This makes me feel old. I remember seeing Hackers in the theater, when it came out, back in 1995. NYNEX was the local RBOC. Broadband wasn't a thing yet, and everyone was still on dialup.

Briefly? The New York / New England RBOC was called NYNEX for most of the 80's and 90's, a lot longer than it was Bell Atlantic. Bell Atlantic was just a 3 or 4 year thing after it acquired NYNEX.

You're right: NYNEX existed from 1984 (breakup of Bell System) to 1997. But Bell Atlantic was also an RBOC created in 1984. The two companies merged in 1997, with the resulting company being called Bell Atlantic (which was when NY's phone company became Bell Atlantic). Finally, Bell Atlantic acquired GTE in 2000 to form Verizon.[1]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NYNEX#History

RBOC history is so crazy when you read about it. All these companies were broken up to eventually reform into huge corporate behemoths again, only decades later ("new" AT&T, Verizon, and Lumen / Century Link) It makes me wonder if we weren't better off just keeping the original AT&T together.

Relevant: https://www.theverge.com/2016/10/24/13389592/att-time-warner...

As far as I've seen, the RBOC names persist in regulatory filings and stuff; I believe any names newer than that are pure marketing.

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