>I cannot find anything to substantiate this claim. Is your statement applicable only to a single country? This quora post summarizes nicely - Bell standardize

>I cannot find anything to substantiate this claim. Is your statement applicable only to a single country? This quora post summarizes nicely - Bell standardized on 7 for local (10 counting area code) based on the research I cited earlier: https://www.quora.com/Why-did-Bell-Labs-create-phone-numbers-of-7-digits-10-digits-Is-there-a-reason-that-dashes-and-brackets-are-used https://www.quora.com/Why-did-Bell-Labs-create-phone-numbers... By "initially" I meant "when telephones began to become mainstream and part of everyday life" - sorry for the confusion.