Dedicated telephone numbers for facsimile, Internet access, cellular, modem, wireless etc, etc mean that one person might now have up to five numbers for different purposes, and the number of available area codes keeps increasing as the geographic coverage of area codes in population centers keeps getting smaller. The North American Numbering Plan Administration, which assigned its first 87 US area codes in 1947, and could count 143 by January 1995, had to add 14 more in 1995, 21 in 1996 and by the end of this year expects to add another 37. The situation is particularly irksome for area code map publishers, such as Aegis Publishing Inc, which fights to keep its maps legible and has to update them four times a year. So now it’s publishing them on the Web at www.aegisbooks.com, just to encourage you to use one more of those phone numbers.
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