1.
Telephone
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A telephone, or phone, is a telecommunications device that permits two or more users to conduct a conversation when they are too far apart to be heard directly. In 1876, Scottish emigrant Alexander Graham Bell was the first to be granted a United States patent for a device that produced clearly intelligible replication of the human voice and this instrument was further developed by many others. The telephone was the first device in history that people to talk directly with each other across large distances. Telephones rapidly became indispensable to businesses, government, and households, the essential elements of a telephone are a microphone to speak into and an earphone which reproduces the voice in a distant location. Until approximately the 1970s most telephones used a dial, which was superseded by the modern DTMF push-button dial. The receiver and transmitter are usually built into a handset which is held up to the ear, the dial may be located either on the handset, or on a base unit to which the handset is connected. The transmitter converts the sound waves to electrical signals which are sent through the network to the receiving phone. The receiving telephone converts the signals into audible sound in the receiver, telephones permit duplex communication, meaning they allow the people on both ends to talk simultaneously. The first telephones were connected to each other from one customers office or residence to another customers location. Being impractical beyond just a few customers, these systems were replaced by manually operated centrally located switchboards. For greater mobility, various systems were developed for transmission between mobile stations on ships and automobiles in the middle 20th century. Hand-held mobile phone]s was introduced for personal service starting in 1973, by the late 1970s several mobile telephone networks operated around the world. In 1983, the Advanced Mobile Phone System was launched, offering a standardized technology providing portability for users far beyond the residence or office. These analog cellular system evolved into digital networks with better security, greater capacity, better regional coverage, the public switched telephone network, with its hierarchical system of many switching centers, interconnects telephones around the world for communication with each other. With the standardized international numbering system, E.164, each line has an identifying telephone number. Although originally designed for voice communications, convergence has enabled most modern cell phones to have many additional capabilities. Since 1999, the trend for mobile phones is smartphones that integrate all mobile communication, a traditional landline telephone system, also known as plain old telephone service, commonly carries both control and audio signals on the same twisted pair of insulated wires, the telephone line. The control and signaling equipment consists of three components, the ringer, the hookswitch, and a dial, the ringer, or beeper, light or other device, alerts the user to incoming calls
2.
U.S. Virgin Islands
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The United States Virgin Islands, officially the Virgin Islands of the United States, are a group of islands in the Caribbean that are an insular area of the United States. The islands are part of the Virgin Islands archipelago and are located in the Leeward Islands of the Lesser Antilles. The U. S. Virgin Islands consist of the islands of Saint Croix, Saint John, and Saint Thomas. The total land area of the territory is 133.73 square miles, the territorys capital is Charlotte Amalie on the island of Saint Thomas. Previously the Danish West Indies of the Kingdom of Denmark–Norway, they were sold to the United States by Denmark in the Treaty of the Danish West Indies of 1916. They are classified by the U. N. as a Non-Self-Governing Territory, the U. S. Virgin Islands are organized under the 1954 Revised Organic Act of the Virgin Islands and have since held five constitutional conventions. The Fifth Constitutional Convention of the U. S. Virgin Islands met in October 2012 to address these concerns, in 2010 the population was 106,405, and mostly Afro-Caribbean. Tourism and related categories are the economic activity, employing a high percentage of the civilian non-farm labor force that totalled 42,752 persons in 2016. Private sector jobs made up 71 percent of the total workforce, the average private sector salary was $34,088 and the average public sector salary was $52,572. In a May 2016 report, some 11,000 people were categorized as being involved in some aspect of agriculture in the first half of 2016, at that time, there were approximately 607 manufacturing jobs and 1,487 natural resource and construction jobs. The single largest employer was the government, in mid February 2017, the USVI was facing a financial crisis due to a very high debt level of $2 billion and a structural budget deficit of $110 million. The U. S. Virgin Islands were originally inhabited by the Ciboney, Carib, the islands were named by Christopher Columbus on his second voyage in 1493 for Saint Ursula and her virgin followers. Over the next two hundred years, the islands were held by many European powers, including Spain, Great Britain, the Netherlands, France, and Denmark-Norway. The Danish West India Company settled on Saint Thomas in 1672, settled on Saint John in 1694, the islands became royal Danish colonies in 1754, named the Danish West Indian Islands. Sugarcane, produced by labor, drove the islands economy during the 18th and early 19th centuries. The Danish West India and Guinea Company are also credited with naming the island St. John, the Danish crown took full control of Saint John in 1754 along with St. Thomas and St. Croix. Sugarcane plantations such as the famous Annaberg Sugar Plantation were established in great numbers on St. John because of the intense heat, the establishment of sugarcane plantations also led to the buying of more slaves from Africa. In 1733 St. John was the site of one of the first significant slave rebellions in the New World when Akwamu slaves from the Gold Coast took over the island for six months, the Danish were able to defeat the enslaved Africans with help from the French in Martinique
3.
United States
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Forty-eight of the fifty states and the federal district are contiguous and located in North America between Canada and Mexico. The state of Alaska is in the northwest corner of North America, bordered by Canada to the east, the state of Hawaii is an archipelago in the mid-Pacific Ocean. The U. S. territories are scattered about the Pacific Ocean, the geography, climate and wildlife of the country are extremely diverse. At 3.8 million square miles and with over 324 million people, the United States is the worlds third- or fourth-largest country by area, third-largest by land area. It is one of the worlds most ethnically diverse and multicultural nations, paleo-Indians migrated from Asia to the North American mainland at least 15,000 years ago. European colonization began in the 16th century, the United States emerged from 13 British colonies along the East Coast. Numerous disputes between Great Britain and the following the Seven Years War led to the American Revolution. On July 4,1776, during the course of the American Revolutionary War, the war ended in 1783 with recognition of the independence of the United States by Great Britain, representing the first successful war of independence against a European power. The current constitution was adopted in 1788, after the Articles of Confederation, the first ten amendments, collectively named the Bill of Rights, were ratified in 1791 and designed to guarantee many fundamental civil liberties. During the second half of the 19th century, the American Civil War led to the end of slavery in the country. By the end of century, the United States extended into the Pacific Ocean. The Spanish–American War and World War I confirmed the status as a global military power. The end of the Cold War and the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991 left the United States as the sole superpower. The U. S. is a member of the United Nations, World Bank, International Monetary Fund, Organization of American States. The United States is a developed country, with the worlds largest economy by nominal GDP. It ranks highly in several measures of performance, including average wage, human development, per capita GDP. While the U. S. economy is considered post-industrial, characterized by the dominance of services and knowledge economy, the United States is a prominent political and cultural force internationally, and a leader in scientific research and technological innovations. In 1507, the German cartographer Martin Waldseemüller produced a map on which he named the lands of the Western Hemisphere America after the Italian explorer and cartographer Amerigo Vespucci
4.
Canada
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Canada is a country in the northern half of North America. Canadas border with the United States is the worlds longest binational land border, the majority of the country has a cold or severely cold winter climate, but southerly areas are warm in summer. Canada is sparsely populated, the majority of its territory being dominated by forest and tundra. It is highly urbanized with 82 per cent of the 35.15 million people concentrated in large and medium-sized cities, One third of the population lives in the three largest cities, Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver. Its capital is Ottawa, and other urban areas include Calgary, Edmonton, Quebec City, Winnipeg. Various aboriginal peoples had inhabited what is now Canada for thousands of years prior to European colonization. Pursuant to the British North America Act, on July 1,1867, the colonies of Canada, New Brunswick and this began an accretion of provinces and territories to the mostly self-governing Dominion to the present ten provinces and three territories forming modern Canada. With the Constitution Act 1982, Canada took over authority, removing the last remaining ties of legal dependence on the Parliament of the United Kingdom. Canada is a parliamentary democracy and a constitutional monarchy, with Queen Elizabeth II being the head of state. The country is officially bilingual at the federal level and it is one of the worlds most ethnically diverse and multicultural nations, the product of large-scale immigration from many other countries. Its advanced economy is the eleventh largest in the world, relying chiefly upon its abundant natural resources, Canadas long and complex relationship with the United States has had a significant impact on its economy and culture. Canada is a country and has the tenth highest nominal per capita income globally as well as the ninth highest ranking in the Human Development Index. It ranks among the highest in international measurements of government transparency, civil liberties, quality of life, economic freedom, Canada is an influential nation in the world, primarily due to its inclusive values, years of prosperity and stability, stable economy, and efficient military. While a variety of theories have been postulated for the origins of Canada. In 1535, indigenous inhabitants of the present-day Quebec City region used the word to direct French explorer Jacques Cartier to the village of Stadacona, from the 16th to the early 18th century Canada referred to the part of New France that lay along the St. Lawrence River. In 1791, the area became two British colonies called Upper Canada and Lower Canada collectively named The Canadas, until their union as the British Province of Canada in 1841. Upon Confederation in 1867, Canada was adopted as the name for the new country at the London Conference. The transition away from the use of Dominion was formally reflected in 1982 with the passage of the Canada Act, later that year, the name of national holiday was changed from Dominion Day to Canada Day
5.
North American Numbering Plan
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The North American Numbering Plan is a telephone numbering plan that encompasses 25 distinct regions in twenty countries primarily in North America, including the Caribbean and the U. S. territories. Not all North American countries participate in the NANP, each participating country forms a regulatory authority that has plenary control over local numbering resources. The FCC also serves as the U. S. regulator, Canadian numbering decisions are made by the Canadian Numbering Administration Consortium. The NANP divides the territories of its members into numbering plan areas which are encoded numerically with a telephone number prefix. Each telephone is assigned a telephone number unique only within its respective plan area. The telephone number consists of a central office code and a four-digit station number. The combination of a code and the telephone number serves as a destination routing address in the public switched telephone network. For international call routing, the NANP has been assigned the calling code 1 by the International Telecommunications Union. The North American Numbering Plan conforms with ITU Recommendation E.164, from its beginnings in 1876 and throughout the first part of the 20th century, the Bell System grew from essentially local or regional telephone systems. These systems expanded by growing their subscriber bases, as well as increasing their service areas by implementing additional local exchanges that were interconnected with tie trunks and it was the responsibility of each local administration to design telephone numbering plans that accommodated the local requirements and growth. As a result, the Bell System as a developed into an unorganized system of many differing local numbering systems. The diversity impeded the efficient operation and interconnection of exchanges into a system for long-distance telephone communication. The new numbering plan was accepted in October 1947, dividing most of North America into 86 Numbering Plan Areas. Each NPA was assigned a Numbering Plan Area code, often abbreviated as area code and these codes were first used by long-distance operators to establish long-distance calls between toll offices. The first customer-dialed direct call using area codes was made on November 10,1951, from Englewood, New Jersey, to Alameda, California. Direct distance dialing was introduced across the country and by the early 1960s most areas of the Bell System had been converted and it was commonplace in cities. In the following decades, the system expanded to all of the United States and its territories, Canada, Bermuda. By 1967,129 area codes had been assigned, mexican participation was planned, but implementation stopped after two area codes had been assigned and Mexico opted for an international numbering format, using country code 52
6.
Area codes in the Caribbean
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By the mid-1990s, with the proliferation of fax machines, mobile phones, computers, and pagers in the region, the 809 area code was almost exhausted. New area codes were added, and since 1999 no two share a code. 809 is now used only in the Dominican Republic, sint Maarten used the country code +599 of the Netherlands Antilles until joining the NANP on September 30,2011, with area code 721. The following was the 1994-1995 numbering plan for 809, starting in the 1980s, Puerto Rico, Bermuda and the Dominican Republic began to use prefixes from unused ranges throughout the 2xx to 9xx range. Historic ranges are shown in parentheses, the national number appeared in local telephone directories. Caribbean nations with a larger numbering resource requirement used seven-digit dialing, in chart above, digits in italics were just the initial digit of seven-digit number dialing. Source for above info, Incumbent provider Cable and Wireless Telephone-directory from Barbados of 1994-1995, not all of the Caribbean islands are in the North American Numbering Plan, the following have country codes. 809 scam List of NANP area codes North American Numbering Plan expansion List of country calling codes Category, Telephone numbers by country North American Numbering Plan Administration
