Notifications
Clear all
Topic starter
is there any rhyme or reason to the telephone exchanges/prefixes?
at first i had the impression that certain ones, such as 693 and 776 belonged to st. john and 777 belonged to st. thomas, but then i started to see that it appears the islands share the exchanges. that made me wonder if in the past you used to be able to tell which island it was by the exchange but now they are all mixed up... anyone know?
also, when contracting your telephone service, do you have the ability to request a certain exchange? where i live now, there are several, as in many places, and you can ask for a certain one.
Posted : April 29, 2008 7:03 am
You take what you can get. 772 & 773 are STX (among others, I'm sure.) 774-775-776-777 are STT/STJ. Not sure about the newer prefixes.
Used to be they were all starting with 77 & you didn't have to dial those 2 numbers. When people ask for my number, I still often just say 6-1234.
Posted : April 29, 2008 9:54 am
That's not your number lest you live at Blackbeard's LOL
Way back when they first changed over the phones to the 7 digit system it went like this:
774, 775 St Thomas 774 was town and west and 775 country 776-6XXX St John
772 F'sted, 773 C'sted St Croix
You only needed to dial 5 digits at this time eliminating the 77's
Then the miracle of tel touch phones arrived. They added the 776 exchange to St. Thomas with none beginning with a 6 like in St John all of their numbers were 776-6XXX. Lots of us scrambled to get the new exchange as the 774's did not have tel touch. They may have added 778 in St Croix, mid isle, at this time.
This lasted for quite some time untie numbers started to run out and they added the 777 exchange for St Thomas, all of St Thomas. We then had to start to dial all digits. People still today tell you there number like Trade with only 5 digits. You know they have been around for some time! 777 only had numbers beginning with 8 at first in the early nineties, then a couple of years later the rest were added.
Along came the 693 exchange for St John and 692 for St Croix. At about this time exchanges no longer were localized by area or island.
I had a 693 # on St Thomas. St John got 779 but this also showed up in St Thomas. Now,you can carry your number with you if you move. Not sure form St Croix though. They then added 714 and 715 to St Thomas and 712, 713, 718 to St Croix. Who knows what's next?
Won't even try to do the cell phone exchanges!
There were days you could sit at the desk in the phone company and look at the available numbers and choose yours. Depends on how nice you are that day I guess, as I hear they sometimes tell you that the computer picks them, which I know can be worked around.
RL
Posted : April 29, 2008 12:06 pm
Topic starter
great feedback and very interesting history bit.
thanks!
Posted : April 29, 2008 4:57 pm
STT prefixes that i know of 776,775,774,779,778,777,714,715 STX prefixes that i know of 773,719,772,713,692,712,718
Posted : April 29, 2008 7:33 pm
Kind of what I said. But 778 is STX.
RL
Posted : April 30, 2008 4:27 am
LOL, Ronnie yes but with fewer words and it was from earlier post over on the classified side
Posted : April 30, 2008 7:58 am
