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Back in the day, AT&T had technological issues that meant that there were separate "in-state" and "out-of-state" 800 numbers, so every national advertisement al
by drfuchs 11y ago
Back in the day, AT&T had technological issues that meant that there were separate "in-state" and "out-of-state" 800 numbers, so every national advertisement always mentioned a main 800 number, plus a different one for the one particular state where they actually had their call center. Single-state institutions sometimes only had in-state 800 numbers, so, for instance, you literally couldn't call California's Franchise Tax Board (the state's IRS-like tax authority) from outside of California (as I learned from bitter experience). Look up "InWATS" in Wikipedia for more details. Now, get off my lawn.
- brandonmenc 11y agoMy mom worked at GTE and when I went to college in 1997 she got us a WATS line so I could dial 1-800 to call home. One of her jobs in the early 80s was to calculate the bills for WATS lines. There was a room full of mechanical counters, like odometers, that would increment while people were talking on their line. Every day she'd write down the new counts, subtract the previous day's counts, and they'd bill the difference.