Re: CHAT: postcodes

On Sep/22/2002, Nik Taylor wrote:

> I wonder how common that is?  Cell phones here just have numbers like
> any other phone.  So, you can't tell from a number if it's a cell or a
> regular phone number.  There might be exchanges reserved for cells, I'm
> not sure.
        Here in Spain, cell phones usually begin with 6xx (being "xx"
two numbers, obviously). They're quite easy to discern from "normal"
phone numbers, because these begin all by 9xx; being "xx" two numbers
depending on the province and the "autonomal community" (translation is
lousy; think about it as very roughly equivalent to US states) it
belongs to. For example: any number belonging to Galicia will start by
"98". The ones for Lugo start by "982", Coruña "981", etc. There are,
however, a few exceptions: Madrid has only "91" (I suppose that's
because there are no provinces in Madrid), and IIRC Barcelona (which is
a province inside Catalunya) has only "93".

> Local calls here are free (unless you're on a cell, but then most cell
> phones have free long distance, it's just a fixed rate for all calls)
        What a luck. Here every call is charged, even the local ones:
roughly and IIRC, 2 EUR an hour or "only" 1 EUR if on "reduced bill
time": from 18:00 to 8:00 on workdays, all day on weekends, and all day
on national party days. Luckily, there are so-called "fixed bill" that
allow you to pay a fixed rate every month and do any local call that you
want on these special times. Though, as it's not really "fixed" (because
this would mean a fixed rate for every local call every hour of every
day), it's commonly known as "ondulated bill" :-) That's what I and many
other have, and the practical effect is that I when I get home I'm
online all the time covered by this modality :-)

        I heard that in Russia local calls are free too, and that's why
FTN networks are common. Indeed, FTN networks here almost disappeared
when Internet got affordable for the everyman. So it's quite reasonable.

> I'm not sure about in England, but in the US, counties are subdivisions
> of states.  Most counties will have several towns and cities, but a few
> very large cities have incorporated their county.  New York City has
> spread over five counties.
        Heh. And I always thought that Madrid (1 million inhabitants,
IIRC), or even Coruña (250000) were too big, busy and noisy to live in
:-)

--
        Roberto Suarez Soto