Fictional Telephone Numbers
In American television shows and films, 555 (or, in older movies and shows, KLondike 5 or KLamath 5) is used as the first three digits of fictional telephone numbers, so if anyone is tempted to telephone a number seen on screen, it does not cause a nuisance to any actual person.
There are occasions, however, when a non-555 is used in real-life context (often in songs), with varying intents and consequences. A classic example is the 1982 song "867-5309/Jenny" by Tommy Tutone, which is still the cause of a large number of nuisance calls, although an Indianapolis plumbing company used both the tune and the number for advertising purposes.
Similarly, not all numbers beginning with "555" are fictional. For example, 555-1212 is the number for directory assistance in many places. In many, but not all areas, dialing "555" numbers other than 555-1212 will actually get you to directory assistance as well. In fact, only 555-0100 through 555-0199 are now reserved for fictional use, with the other numbers having been released for assignment. Where used, these are normally information numbers; Bell Canada and BCTel had briefly promoted 555-1313 as a pay-per-use "name that number" reverse lookup in the mid-1990s. Since "1xx" exchanges are generally not assigned, some movies have started to use fictional telephone numbers starting with "1".
There are various numbers which are deliberately not issued (for instance, numbers like +1-212-718-xxxx, where 212 and 718 are both existing or proposed New York City area codes, are typically avoided to prevent confusion between an area code and a similarly-numbered local exchange in the same region). 958-xxxx and 959-xxxx are very commonly reserved for plant test (local and long distance, respectively); a few area codes once reserved additional test exchanges such as 999-xxxx, although this usage is declining. Area codes where the last two digits match are reserved for non-geographic numbers such as +1-800 or +1-888; if there is little or nothing in area code 500, there is no immediate probability of new non-geographic prefixes in the same range (such as +1-555) being created. A 0 or 1 in the first digit of an area code or seven-digit local number is invalid, as is a 9 as the middle digit of an area code. Lists of exchanges in an individual area code (posted by CNAC in Canada, NANP in the US) all list various specific reserved prefixes as deliberately not issued. Unlike the 555 exchange, many of these see little or no use as fictional telephone numbers.
Read more about this topic: Area Codes In The United States
Famous quotes containing the words fictional, telephone and/or numbers:
“One of the proud joys of the man of letters—if that man of letters is an artist—is to feel within himself the power to immortalize at will anything he chooses to immortalize. Insignificant though he may be, he is conscious of possessing a creative divinity. God creates lives; the man of imagination creates fictional lives which may make a profound and as it were more living impression on the world’s memory.”
—Edmond De Goncourt (1822–1896)
“It’s a hard feeling when everyone’s in a hurry to talk to somebody else, but not to talk to you. Sometimes you get a feeling of need to talk to somebody. Somebody who wants to listen to you other than “Why didn’t you get me the right number?””
—Heather Lamb, U.S. telephone operator. As quoted in Working, book 2, by Studs Terkel (1973)
“All ye poets of the age,
All ye witlings of the stage,
Learn your jingles to reform,
Crop your numbers to conform.
Let your little verses flow
Gently, sweetly, row by row;
Let the verse the subject fit,
Little subject, little wit.
Namby-Pamby is your guide,
Albion’s joy, Hibernia’s pride.”
—Henry Carey (1693?–1743)