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The US mixes up fixed line numbers with mobile numbers, so you can’t tell them apart based just on the number. In Australia, mobile services are a separate are

The US mixes up fixed line numbers with mobile numbers, so you can’t tell them apart based just on the number. In Australia, mobile services are a separate area code-so a mobile number tells you that it is a mobile number, but nothing else-once upon a time, the first few digits told you the telco, but with number portability that is largely no longer true. Unless it is the teachers at our kid’s school, who use Microsoft Teams to call parents on their mobile, so it looks like it is coming from a fixed line

lxgr 1y ago
> The US mixes up fixed line numbers with mobile numbers This is the case in all NANP countries (i.e. also Canada and many Caribbean nations), and I believe only there.
- ghaff 1y ago
  Some of it is probably an artifact of mobile plan pricing being quite dependent on who you were calling when cell phones became widely available. I (still) have an area code that's the result of who I tended to be calling on my cell at the time. Hasn't been my "home" area code for many decades. (Not that I actually have a landline any longer.)
  - lxgr 1y ago
    I think it's the other way around: Since calls were routed geographically, and it's not apparent to the caller whether they're calling a landline or mobile phone, it also made sense to price them geographically (at least before the marginal cost of the incremental call-mile went to zero).
  - psunavy03 1y ago
    https://xkcd.com/1129/ https://xkcd.com/1129/
    - ghaff 1y ago
      I didn't actually even live in the area code at the time but had outdoor activities with people who did live in that area code who I might call from my cell. So that's what I chose. And, by the time I switched carriers, phone number portability was a thing. Funnily enough, that area code became something of a status thing in an era when near-in suburbs got "kicked out" to a suburban area code when a lot of people were getting second phone lines for modems. There's a Seinfeld episode related from a different city.

lxgr 1y ago

> The US mixes up fixed line numbers with mobile numbers This is the case in all NANP countries (i.e. also Canada and many Caribbean nations), and I believe only there.

ghaff 1y ago
Some of it is probably an artifact of mobile plan pricing being quite dependent on who you were calling when cell phones became widely available. I (still) have an area code that's the result of who I tended to be calling on my cell at the time. Hasn't been my "home" area code for many decades. (Not that I actually have a landline any longer.)
- lxgr 1y ago
  I think it's the other way around: Since calls were routed geographically, and it's not apparent to the caller whether they're calling a landline or mobile phone, it also made sense to price them geographically (at least before the marginal cost of the incremental call-mile went to zero).
- psunavy03 1y ago
  https://xkcd.com/1129/ https://xkcd.com/1129/
  - ghaff 1y ago
    I didn't actually even live in the area code at the time but had outdoor activities with people who did live in that area code who I might call from my cell. So that's what I chose. And, by the time I switched carriers, phone number portability was a thing. Funnily enough, that area code became something of a status thing in an era when near-in suburbs got "kicked out" to a suburban area code when a lot of people were getting second phone lines for modems. There's a Seinfeld episode related from a different city.