Map of California area codes in blue (and border states) with 408 in red

North American area code 408 is a California telephone area code which covers Saratoga, Los Gatos, Milpitas, Sunnyvale, Santa Clara, Cupertino and San Jose. It was created in a 1959 split from area code 415 in a flash-cut with no permissive dialing period. It was again split, with area code 831 being created for the counties of Santa Cruz, Monterey, and San Benito on July 11, 1998. Image File history File links Download high resolution version (460x630, 31 KB)Map of California area codes in blue (and border states) with 408 in red. ... Image File history File links Download high resolution version (460x630, 31 KB)Map of California area codes in blue (and border states) with 408 in red. ... North America North America is a continent[1] in the Earths northern hemisphere and (chiefly) western hemisphere. ... Official language(s) English Capital Sacramento Largest city Los Angeles Area  Ranked 3rd  - Total 158,302 sq mi (410,000 km²)  - Width 250 miles (400 km)  - Length 770 miles (1,240 km)  - % water 4. ... This article or section includes a list of works cited or a list of external links, but its sources remain unclear because it lacks in-text citations. ... A telephone numbering plan is a system that allows subscribers to make and receive telephone calls across long distances. ... Saratoga (IPA: ) is a city in Santa Clara County, California, USA. It is located on the west side of the Santa Clara Valley, in the San Francisco Bay Area. ... Los Gatos is an incorporated town in Santa Clara County, California, United States. ... Location in Santa Clara County and the state of California Country United States State California County Santa Clara Government  - Mayor Jose Joe Esteves Area  - City 13. ... Location in Santa Clara County and the state of California Coordinates: , Country United States State California County Santa Clara Government  - Mayor Otto Lee Area  - City 22. ... Location of Santa Clara within Santa Clara County, California. ... Location of Cupertino within Santa Clara County, California. ... For other uses, see San José. Nickname: Location of San Jose within Santa Clara County, California. ... Year 1959 (MCMLIX) was a common year starting on Thursday (link will display full calendar) of the Gregorian calendar. ... Area code 415 was one of the original three area codes established in California in 1947. ... Telephone area code 831 consists of Salinas, Hollister, Monterey, Santa Cruz and northern Central Coast, California. ... Santa Cruz County is a county located on the Pacific coast of the U.S. state of California, just south of the San Francisco Bay Area, it forms the northern coast of the Monterey Bay. ... Monterey County is a county located on the Pacific coast of California, its northwestern section forming the southern half of Monterey Bay. ... San Benito County is a county located in the Coast Range Mountains of the U.S. state of California, south of San Jose. ... is the 192nd day of the year (193rd in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ... Year 1998 (MCMXCVIII) was a common year starting on Thursday (link will display full 1998 Gregorian calendar). ...

Los Gatos

Los Gatos is one of three cities in Santa Clara County that were not in the Bell System. Gilroy and Morgan Hill were also outside the RBOC service area. These communities were served by what was referred to in Bell System circles as Independent Companies. Santa Clara County is a county located in the San Francisco Bay Area of the U.S. state of California. ... The Bell System was a trademark and service mark used by the United States telecommunications company American Telephone & Telegraph Company (AT&T) and its affiliated companies to co-brand their extensive circuit-switched telephone network and their affiliations with each other. ... Gilroy (IPA: ) is the southmost city in Santa Clara County, California, USA. According to the United States 2000 Census, the city population was 41,464. ... Morgan Hill (IPA: ) is a city located in the southern part of Santa Clara County, California, USA. Founded on November 10, 1906, the city was named after Hiram Morgan Hill, a San Franciscan who built a country retreat home here in 1884. ...

The organization first offering telephone service in town was called Los Gatos Telephone Company according to historian Willys I. Peck. Later, service was provided by Western California Telephone Company. Western California also provided telephone service to Novato, Morgan Hill and Kenwood. In the 1970s, the utility was acquired by General Telephone (which became GTE and then Verizon). These four service areas are now served by Verizon. Novato is a city located in the North Bay region of the San Francisco Bay Area, in northern Marin County. ... Morgan Hill (IPA: ) is a city located in the southern part of Santa Clara County, California, USA. Founded on November 10, 1906, the city was named after Hiram Morgan Hill, a San Franciscan who built a country retreat home here in 1884. ... Kenwood, California is a town along State Route 12 in Sonoma County. ... The 1970s decade refers to the years from 1970 to 1979, also called The Seventies. ... Categories: Corporation stubs | Communications companies of the United States | Defunct companies | Telephone companies | Public Utilities ...

Central Offices

Los Gatos is served by three central offices. In history, these were referred to as the Six Office, the Four Office, and the Mountain Office. The first two of these designations come from the historic exchange names when the town converted from manual to dial service. Phone numbers in these two offices were ELgato-4 and ELgato-6 numbers respectively. As the area migrated to seven-digit numbers, these changed to 354- and 356-numbers. In their earlier life, all numbers for the segment of town served by each office had the respective prefix or office code related to that office. In the field of telecommunications, a central office or telephone exchange houses equipment that is commonly known as simply a switch, which is a piece of equipment that connects phone calls. ...

In history, billing information for calls placed from Los Gatos was recorded on magnetic tape. It was common to see GTE staff driving billing tapes to the air freight terminal at San Jose International Airport. The tapes were sent to a centralized processing center in Southern California. As the tapes were processed, the charges found their way to subscriber bills.

Both the Four Office and the Six Office served suburban areas in the Town of Los Gatos. In the 1970s, both offices operated Automatic Electric 1ESS switches. Locals report community folklore about the public perception of poor service in the area at that time. Their reports suggest the switches would fail catastrophically from time to time. In one instance, a retired GTE employee claims to recall the Four Office having a catastrophic failure where all call processing stopped, and no subscribers the Four Office area had a dial tone. Another person who worked as a reserve police officer recalled one incident where all phones at the police department went dead. He was sent to knock on the door of the Four Office to ask when the police department's phones would begin working again. In this one instance, the outage lasted for hours. In the mid-1980s, local newspapers reported Verizon upgraded the local switches to Automatic Electric GTD5 equipment. News accounts say this was done to roll-out new services which were offered in the surrounding RBOC area but could not be supported by the AE 1ESS. The reliablilty of service was improved overnight and now matches surrounding areas. This is intended to be a list of the more common central office (telephone company operated) phone switches. ...

The Mountain Office served the Summit Road community and areas of the Santa Cruz Mountains west of town. Although the office code or prefix for service from this switch was ELgato-3, (later 353,) it was not referred to as the Three Office. During the 1970s and early 1980s, the area was served by an Automatic Electric step-by-step (SXS) electromechanical switch. The step office was a maintenance headache and its location in a rural area made the problem more challenging. Users noticed crosstalk and dial pulsing was audible during at least some of their calls. Outside plant in the Mountain area was subject to a variety of tough environmental factors, including long loop lengths and the high humidity of the Redwood Forest. The area is now served by an unknown type of modern, stored-program-controlled switch.

Before the late 1980s, and the arrival of Cellular and PCS service, GTE offered Improved Mobile Telephone Service (IMTS) on VHF (152 MHz) and UHF (454 MHz) in Los Gatos. The service included full-duplex dial service. There were tight restrictions on call lengths because there were only a few channels available. In the late 1970s, daytime calls longer than three minutes were billed at over one dollar per minute to discourage the long-winded. The VHF equipment, which is long-gone as you read this, was located at a site near La Rinconada WTP on More Avenue at NAD27 coordinates 37°15′22″N, 121°58′59″W. The IMTS system included General Electric Mobile Radio voting equipment. (Voting is a form of diversity combining used in land mobile radio systems.) One receiver for at least one of the voted IMTS channels was located in a pole mount cabinet on a utility pole along Montevina Road off State Route 17. These IMTS systems were dismantled after Cellular systems became available to subscribers in the Bay Area. Diversity Combining is the technique applied to combine the multiple received signals of a diversity reception device into a single improved signal. ... JUNCTION MILE POST I-880 SCL 13. ...

San Jose

Manual service

Before 1949, San Jose telephones were manual service. A subscriber would lift the receiver and wait for the operator to inquire, "Number Please?" Most telephone numbers started with Ballard or Columbia. Mayfair numbers served the east side. The City Manager's number was Ballard 1 while most numbers had four digits and a letter, (for example: Ballard 2345 W). One of four letters was appended to telephone numbers: J, M, R, or W. These letters may have tipped off the operator as to the proper keys to press to ring a subscriber who was on a party line. Politics In politics, the line or the party line is an English language idiom for a political party or social movements canon agenda, as well as specific ideological elements specific to the organizations partisanship. ...

Dial service and numbering plan

After the conversion to dial service in 1949, San Jose telephone numbers started with names including ALpine-, ANdrews-, BAldwin-, CLayburn-, and CYpress-. As the North American Dialing Plan evolved in the 1950s, these became today's 25x-, 26x-, 22x-, 258-, and 29x-numbers respectively. A telephone operator manually connecting calls with patch cables at a telephone switchboard. ...

When area codes were introduced in 1947 San Jose was assigned to area code 415 along with the rest of the Bay Area and much of central California. Area code 408 was created on January 1, 1959 and included most of Santa Clara, Santa Cruz, Monterey and San Benito Counties. Until the late 1970s, there was permissive dialing between (408) and (415). At the time, the entire East Bay, peninsula, and on to Marin County was in area code (415). Phone numbers were not duplicated across (415) and (408), so subscribers could dial seven-digit San Francisco or Berkeley numbers without dialing an area code and the call would go through. Population growth, facsimile machines, and pagers caused demands for numbers to outrun the capacity of this permissive dialing plan. The additional demands for PCS and cellular phone numbers helped necessitate the (831)/(408) area code split, the (650)/(415) split, and the earlier (510)/(415) split. A telephone numbering plan is a plan for allocating telephone number ranges to countries, regions, areas and exchanges and to non-fixed telephone networks such as mobile phone networks. ... USGS satellite photo of the San Francisco Bay Area. ... Official language(s) English Capital Sacramento Largest city Los Angeles Area  Ranked 3rd  - Total 158,302 sq mi (410,000 km²)  - Width 250 miles (400 km)  - Length 770 miles (1,240 km)  - % water 4. ... is the 1st day of the year in the Gregorian calendar. ... Year 1959 (MCMLIX) was a common year starting on Thursday (link will display full calendar) of the Gregorian calendar. ... Santa Clara County is a county located in the San Francisco Bay Area of the U.S. state of California. ... Santa Cruz County is a county located on the Pacific coast of the U.S. state of California, just south of the San Francisco Bay Area, it forms the northern coast of the Monterey Bay. ... Monterey County is a county located on the Pacific coast of California, its northwestern section forming the southern half of Monterey Bay. ... San Benito County is a county located in the Coast Range Mountains of the U.S. state of California, south of San Jose. ... Marin County (pronounced mah-RIN) is a county located in the North San Francisco Bay Area of the U.S. state of California, across the Golden Gate Bridge from San Francisco. ... Nickname: Location of the City and County of San Francisco, California Coordinates: , Country United States of America State California City-County San Francisco Founded 1776 Government  - Mayor Gavin Newsom Area  - City  47 sq mi (122 km²)  - Land  46. ... Berkeley is a city on the east shore of San Francisco Bay in northern California, in the United States. ...

Part of the old permissive dialing plan included a mass calling prefix for radio station contests. It was introduced in the 1960s because some contests put unacceptable loads on the Bay Area's telephone switches. Until the 1980s, radio station call-in contests throughout the Bay Area used 575-numbers. Electromechanical switching equipment of the day had been engineered to accommodate large call volumes to 575-numbers. Large numbers of calls would otherwise have overloaded switching equipment causing slow dial tone and blocked long distance circuits.

A patchwork quilt of electromechanical switching equipment handled San Jose calls between 1949 and the 1980s. There were about eight Western Electric Crossbar switches, at least one Number 1 and mostly Number 5. There was a Western Electric 4A Crossbar that took up two floors of the Main telephone exchange. In the mid 1980s, the 4A crossbar was replaced with a digital switch which took up part of a single floor and quadrupled calling capacity. A telephone operator manually connecting calls with patch cables at a telephone switchboard. ...

Mobile service

Before the existence of cell phones, Improved Mobile Telephone Service (IMTS) was offered. As of 1983, three VHF and two UHF channels were available. Subscribers had either a VHF or UHF vehicle-mounted phone, consequently they could access only two or three channels over the entire San Jose area. (On VHF, the maximum system capacity for the San Jose system was three simultaneous calls.)

There was a roaming feature but no registration scheme like the ones used by modern PCS and cell phones. Subscribers who drove to San Francisco or Sacramento had to follow instructions that would not make sense to today's cell phone users. These included, "When within the desired roam mobile service area and, after receiving dial tone, dial code 104. Confirmation tone is heard indicating that all incoming calls will be transferred to the roam mobile service area in which you are presently located."

See also

• List of California area codes
• List of North American area codes
• North American Numbering Plan
• North American Numbering Plan Administration
• NANPA Area Code Map of California
• Whitepages Area code Map