Idea to extend telephone area codes to 4 digit telephone area codes ?

Question

Since the telephone numbers are running out left and right some areas have resorted to making overlay area codes, they are a pain in the @$$ to dial even to call next door (if they have a new telephone line) it's in a different area code. So will this idea work? how about making area codes 4 digits long? dialing one extra digit is better than dialing 4 new ones? don't you think so? or is this not feasible? or will this not help? *sorry, I'm not a telephone company engineer* they would know this answer. Hoping one reads this ;)

Answer 1

This is exactly similar what has happened in the UK.

For example, London used to have separate inner and outer area codes with seven-digit local numbers.  For example, 0171 x*x xxxx would be an Inner London number, while 0181 x*x xxxx would be Outer London.

When these ran out of capacity, the idea of an overlay code or another code split was rejected.  Instead all seven digit local numbers were converted to eight digits and assigned a new, shorter code of 020 to keep the total number length the same.

So, we have gone from a capacity of 15,980,000 usable numbers split across two codes (2 lots of 7,990,000) to a capacity of 79,900,000 with one single common area code with eight-digit local dialling.

But having variable length codes and numbers is common in the UK.  Small towns have long codes and short local numbers such as [phone], while big cities that need more capacity have short codes and long numbers, such as [phone].

Sadly, this doesn't seem to be an option in the US and Canada because of the technology of the phone network.