It is definitely a custom limited to some particular countries.
Wikipedia: The use of alphanumeric codes for exchanges was abandoned in Europe when international direct dialing was introduced in the 1960s, because, for example, dialing VIC 8900 on a Danish telephone would result in a different number to dialling it on a British telephone. At the same time letters were no longer placed on the dials of new telephones.
(The very next paragraph after the one you quoted talks about how letters for European mobile phones were reintroduced some time later, now standardized so as to not have that problem.)
At any rate, the presence of lettered keypads doesn't mean people * had * to make mnemonic phone numbers with them, and it does look like (in Europe) only the UK had such numbers.
Apart from the US and UK, they might be popular in some Commonwealth countries too. I grew up in one and remember having them.
Yes, but only for SMS messages. They are not commonly used to write phone numbers (very occasionally you can see them now, but the numbers are also written below or next to them).
In the early automatic telephone years, letters were also used in the Netherlands, France, Denmark and other countries, but they fell out of use way before most people here were born, and also they were mostly (only?) used for area codes and exchange names/numbers, not subscriber numbers.
Well, the OC was confused as to how letters can be translated into an actual phone number. This should be obvious to anyone that has ever dialed a number on their mobile phone, i.e. OC.
They were specifically asking about landlines. And referring to the method of pressing a number several times to get the correct letter on a mobile phone (i.e., when texting). So they explicitly mentioned that they have seen the letters. However, when dialling a number, they used the numbers, not the letters.
Right. The point is... landlines have nothing to do with it.
Letters are associated with numbers on a phone keypad. This is not a US-only thing. It is not a mobile only thing. It is not a land-line only thing. Keypads, all over the world, have letters on them. Letters (in the same way they are on phone keypads) can be seen on other numerical entry devices, like a keypad for a secure door.
As to pressing a number multiple times when texting, a half-second of thought would make it clear that this wasn't the case. Are you telling me it would be reasonable for OC (or anyone) to think that the NYT's phone number translated from
It was obviously a weird idea, so they were posing it as a question, which is not a strange thing to do if you've never encountered it. Meanwhile, you keep making assumptions based on your own experience which is different from that of others, and stating obvious things from which you then manage to draw wrong conclusions by interpreting them in an obviously incorrect time or context. (I didn't downvote you btw.)
Wikipedia: The use of alphanumeric codes for exchanges was abandoned in Europe when international direct dialing was introduced in the 1960s, because, for example, dialing VIC 8900 on a Danish telephone would result in a different number to dialling it on a British telephone. At the same time letters were no longer placed on the dials of new telephones.