NATIONWIDK NUMBERING PLAN 859 



in the customers' local dialing area. For these offices with five or four- 

 digit local dialing and for offices in the larger places served by certain 

 types of dial equipment, as they are arranged today, it will be necessary 

 to prefix the dialing of toll calls by a transfer or directing code to permit 

 tiie customer getting from the local office into the toll network. 



Independent of the adxantages of a iniiv^ersal 2-5 numbering plan 

 for nationwide operator and customer toll dialing, the Bell System has 

 made considerable progress in this direction over the past several years. 

 New York and Northern New Jersey adopted 2-5 numbering in 1930 

 in order to take advantage of the flexibility of office code assignments 

 and the large code capacity which this type of local numbci'ing pi'ovides. 

 Since World War II many cities and their environs such as Chicago, 

 Boston, Philadelphia, San Francisco, Oakland, Pittsburgh, Milwaukee, 

 Pr()\-idence and a number of smaller cities have followed suit. Presently 

 about 12 million telephones are in areas which have 2-5 numbering 

 (<\clusively in addition to perhaps two million telephones with 2-5 

 numbers in mixed 2—1 and 2-5 areas. Another five million telephones 

 are already planned for con\'ersion to 2-5 luimbers within the next 

 several years. 



The entire program will take many years to realize but it is one which 

 must be accomplished in order to achieve the best results in operator 

 toll dialing and make it possible for a customer at any telephone in the 

 United States and Canada to reach a telephone anywhere in the two 

 coinitries by dialing without the assistance of an operator. 



