POTS; was: Anyone here from Oregon USA to help with collection pickup?

[Sean Conner]

It was thus said that the Great der Mouse once stated:
> > No, my comment referred to the mechanism used to address individual
> > subscribers and the quaint hierarchy of country, area and local
> > exchange prefixes.
> 
> So did mine.  Basically, I see three reasons to not give individuals
> individual phone numbers which stick to the individual.  One is that
> the individual -> phone number mapping is neither one-to-one nor onto,
> and many of the reasons why this is so would not go away; two is the
> privacy and related concerns; three is hat we don't know how to route
> even 1e9, much less 1e11, individual addresses worldwide when there's
> no topological hierarchy available to simplify the problem (note that
> both the large routing networks in operation today, the Internet and
> the PSTN, use hierarchical routing in some form).

  But what about cell phones and roaming?  Last year I went to Las Vegas
with a friend of mine.  My cell phone is in the 561 area code (Palm Beach
County), my friend's phone is in the 205 area code (Tuscaloosa, Alabama). 
Las Vegas is 702.  My Dad was able to call me (760) while I was in Las
Vegas, and I was able to call my friend (205 area code, although phyically
five feet away) from my cell phone.  

  How do they handle *that*?

  -spc (Given the horror stories I've heard about phone switch technology,
	I'm amazed it all even works ... )