History of Nova Scotia
with special attention given to
Communications and Transportation

Chapter 25
1994 January - December

Index with links to the other chapters

1994 January

For e-mail, 1993 was the year of the Internet

The Halifax Daily News sponsored
on-line e-mail discussion groups

The comic strip Dilbert featured the Internet ID
of its creator in every cartoon

It was the year that students at Park View Education Centre
in Bridgewater, Nova Scotia, began to communicate with students
and experts around the globe via Internet e-mail

By Jim Carroll
Co-Author, Canadian Internet Handbook

1994 January

Devco Railway Statistics

        Cape Breton Development Corporation
                  DEVCO Railway

                              1987      1994

       Miles of track           88        86
       Locomotives              16        13
       Cars                    635       635

1994 February 9

Utility Lines Crossing Railway Tracks

Maritime Telegraph & Telephone Company:
Railways should not be an obstacle

In going through the territory of any village, town or city railways should not be an obstacle to the expansion of the residential districts on either side of the track, because such an expansion is to everybody's advantage, railway companies included. The crossing over and under railway tracks of wires and pipes needed for the ever-increasing forward movement, should be facilitated as far as possible.

1994 March

Nova Scotia Electronic Highway Study

1994 April 29

Pilotage Charges

National Transportation Agency
Decision No. 195-W-1994

BACKGROUND

• The Nova Scotia Department of Transportation and Communications;
• The Shipping Federation of Canada;
• Kent Line Limited;
• The Halifax Board of Trade;
• The Government of Newfoundland and Labrador;
• The Halifax-Dartmouth Port Development Commission;
• The Canadian Shipowners Association;
• The Saint John Port Corporation; and
• The Halifax Shipping Association.
• In addition, a notice of intervention was filed by the Halifax Port Corporation on March 24, 1993...

1994 June 1

MT&T Reorganized

On 15 June 1998, the name of the Island Telephone Company Limited was changed to Island Telecom Incorporated. This company started under the name of The Prince Edward Island Telephone Company, which had been operating a public telephone service on Prince Edward Island since 10 April 1885. Maritime Telegraph and Telephone Company bought a large number of shares of Prince Edward Island Telephone Company on 28 June 1910, and has controlled the company ever since. Prince Edward Island has shared area code 902 with Nova Scotia ever since the North American area codes were first assigned in 1947.

1994 August 22

Cape Breton & Central Nova Scotia Railway

1994 August 23

Low-Sulphur Diesel Fuel

1994 September 1

Three-Year Licence Renewal for CIEZ-FM

Reduced term due to station's lapse,
noncompliance with regulatory requirement

1994 September 4

Area Code Now Required for
All Long Distance Telephone Calls

Except neighbouring exchanges

What I have been calling the "exchange number" (three digits) is now officially called Central Switching Office Designation or CSOD. What I have been calling the "line number" (the last four digits of any phone number) are now officially called the Subscriber Line Identifier or SLID.

In practice, the number of area codes and exchange numbers actually available was somewhat less than the above allocation rules indicate. For example, the above rules allow "800" as an area code, but there has never been an area code "800" — "800" was reserved for toll-free long distance calls; lately "888" has also been set aside for this purpose. Similarly, "900" was reserved for a special use. In theory, "911" could be used for an area code, but it was recognized that actually designating any region as area code "911" would be unwise. There are several other unavailable area codes. Area codes n00 (a three-digit number ending with two zeroes) are usually reserved for special services like 700, 800 or 900. In fact, these codes are not considered to be area codes as such, but Service Access Codes (SACs).

There has never been an exchange "555"; this has been reserved for general purpose use within each regional telephone company. (This is the reason you always see "555-xxxx" selected for any fictional phone number on television or in the movies. If a fiction writer needs a made-up phone number, any other choice of exchange number runs the risk of being someone's real phone number, and its appearance on TV can generate a lot of nuisance calls — especially if it is applied in a context suggesting a famous or notorious person — but any number "555-xxxx" is safe, because all such numbers are used only for business purposes within some telco or other, and no individual or small business will have to endure harassment. There are occasional exceptions, such as Hitchcock's Dial M For Murder.) There are other three-digit combinations that cannot be used for exchanges. For example, the emergency number "911" cannot be used as an exchange number. Neither can "411", which is widely used to reach directory assistance. "611" is reserved for repair services, and "811" for business offices. As far as I know, all three-digit combinations of the form "n11" are set aside for uses other than exchange numbers.

There is another restriction on the assignment of exchange numbers within any area code. It's not a good idea to assign the home area code. For example, it is highly unlikely that, in Nova Scotia, there will ever be an exchange "902", because our area code is "902". If exchange "902" were to be installed within area "902", the telephone numbers would look this: 902-902-1234. Local numbers would be 902-1234, which could cause confusion.

In practice, fewer than 720 area codes are available. All combinations with the second and third digits the same (such as "233", "577", "622", etc.) are reserved as "easily recognized" codes for non-geographic services such as existing "500", "800", "888", and "900" services. Certain other combinations are reserved, leaving about 600 possible area codes available for regular use in the present system.

By mid-1997, at least seventeen area codes were in use, which would not have been allowed under the old allocation rules: "250" for all British Columbia except the Vancouver metropolitan region; "867" for the Northwest Territories; "248" for Pontiac, Michigan; "330" for Akron, Ohio; "334" for Montgomery and Mobile, Alabama; "360" for Bellingham, Washington; "423" for Knoxville, Tennessee; "540" for Roanoke, Virginia; "541" for Eugene, Oregon; "573" for Jefferson City, Missouri; "770" for Griffin, Georgia; "765" for Lafayette, Indiana; "847" for Evanston, Illinois; "864" for Greenville, South Carolina; and, in Florida, "941" for Fort Myers, "954" for Fort Lauderdale, and "352" for Gainesville. All of these have, as their second digit, a number other than "0" or "1". In addition to these seventeen area codes, there are about twenty three-digit combinations that are named "country codes" but which function in exactly the same way as area codes — for example, "268" for Antigua, "441" for Bermuda, "876" for Jamaica, and "868" for Trinidad & Tobago; these reach locations in the Caribbean.

Details about the Phone Numbering System

Should phone numbers be treated
as a scarce public resource
rather than private property?

1994 September 7

Air Atlantic Gets Extension
of Bankruptcy Protection

Air Atlantic Licence Suspended
25 January 1994

National Transportation Agency
Decision No. 37-A-1994

Air Atlantic Licence Suspended
25 April 1994

National Transportation Agency
Decision No. 184-A-1994

1994 October 1

Graduated Driver Licensing

• Class 7 learners
• Class 5N newly licensed
• Class 5 regular

• no passengers except a licensed, experienced driver in the front seat, and
• zero blood alcohol content.

• zero blood alcohol content,
• ** only one person permitted in the front seat and only as many people in the back seat as there are seat belts (this means that truck drivers may have only one passenger if there is only one seat), and
• ** no driving between midnight and 5:00am unless accompanied by an experienced driver (Class 5) in the front seat (an exemption may be obtained from the Registry of Motor Vehicles for persons whose employment requires vehicle operation during curfew hours).

• no passengers, and
• daylight driving only.

1994 November

220,000 Passengers Annually

1994 November 28

WTOL-TV (CBS) Toledo Replaces WJBK-TV (CBS) Detroit

• Halifax Cablevision Limited, Halifax
• Able Cablevision Limited, Liverpool
• Eastern Cablevision Limited Truro
• K-Right Communications Limited, Sydney
• Joseph P. Shannon, Bridgetown
• K-Right Communications Limited, Windsor
• Bragg Communications Incorporated, Amherst
• Bragg Communications Incorporated, Antigonish
• Bragg Communications Incorporated, Springhill
• Access Cable Television Limited, Dartmouth
• Access Cable Television Limited, Digby
• Kings Kable Limited, Kentville - Wolfville
• Shaw Cablesystems (N.S.) Limited, Bedford
• Shaw Cablesystems (N.S.) Limited, New Glasgow

1994 December 31

91 Highway Deaths in 1994

Index with links to the other chapters