7 digit dialing

Have a new client outside my normal stomping grounds. He claims he was always able to dial locally using only 7 digits (upstate NY). That’s odd to me because here in NJ we’ve had 10 digit dialing for decades but ok.

In his outbound route dial patters I have NXXXXXX but when a dialing a local number using only 7 digits it returns the asterisk “all circuits are busy now” message.

I can make it work if I prepend the local area code to the NXXXXXX entry but should that be necessary?

I am not aware of any voip providers that will accept ‘7 digit dialing’ because “how would they know which area code to send it to”.
So yes , you will have to do that yourself, just prepend 1NXX or NXX to your NXXXXXXX as the carrier requires.

I provisioned the DID with the sip provider for as specific area and area code, how would they not know?

At first I thought the same thing, the provider can’t complete the call without an area code but it’s not the provider that generating the error message, it’s asterisk so it’s not even getting to the provider.

They had a different cloud based sip provider before and claimed it worked there. I guess the must have set the 7 digit dialing by prepending the local area code as well but I’m just guessing.

just weird, nobody’s ever asked for that before. Guess he’s farther out in the sticks than I thought.

The I in DID’s stands for Direct ‘Inward’ Dialing, outbound calls need separate treatment.

good point, I’ll provisions some DODs…

There where 84 markets that still had no overlay NPAs (area codes) they supported 7-digit dialing. However, with the creation of 988 it made 7-digit dialing obsolete because there are numerous 988 exchanges. So dialing 988-XXXX will result in the call being routed to 988 now.

7-digit was fully retired at the end of Oct 2021 in the US.

1 Like

This topic was automatically closed 31 days after the last reply. New replies are no longer allowed.