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Here are the consolidated answers to Richard E. Birch's
(richard_birch.wgc1@rx.xerox.com) original question:

     Xerox product designers in the US have asked a question I do not
     know the answer to.  Does anyone have any ideas?  The question is:

          "Apparently, in some countries you can dial letters on the phone
	   (i.e. a phone number can be ''321TAXI''.) Is this the case for
	   any country you know about?"


Jeff
INSOFT-L List Manager

*========================================================================*
 Jeff Bowyer                         EMail:
 Computing Center		     jbowyer@cis.vutbr.cz
 Technical University of Brno
 Udolni 19, 602 00 BRNO
 Czech Republic
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Sender: Rachael Barlow (barlow@bostech.com)

If you mean literally typing buttons which represent one letter, then
I don't know of any countries which do this.  If you mean that people
can press buttons which represent up to three letters, then the US
does this.  For instance, AT&T is now advertising the new "1800COLLECT"
number which is "18002655328".


Sender: Chiaki Ishikawa (pmcgw!personal-media.co.jp!ishikawa@uunet.uu.net)

Japan certainly isn't one of such countries. There are only digits on
the push buttons.

(Sometimes I can't figure out what the dial number of a mail order
company advertizing a computer magazine is when they show their
telephone number like xxx-UNIX, etc. since I can't recall how the
alphabets are laid on North American phones although I saw them in
Canada and U.S.A..)


Sender: Dan Charrois (ae277@freenet.carleton.ca)

Funny - I thought the number-letter mapping on telephone keypads was
pretty much universal... it definitely exists in the US and here in Canada.

Anyway, almost all the digits on our phone keypads have 3 letters on them
as well.  So companies sometimes give their phone numbers using the
letters if it makes an easy-to-remember word.  The practice was really
common some time ago, but it is fading out of usage lately.  (The really
frustrating ones are data lines that use letters - although it's usually
easy to remember the phone number that way, no modem I've ever seen
understands the letters, so you have to run to the phone to convert it to
a number before you can use it...)

Anyway, the number-letter mapping is:

2 - ABC
3 - DEF
4 - GHI
5 - JKL
6 - MNO
7 - PRS
8 - TUV
9 - WXY

0 and 1 don't have any letters mapped to them.

Hope this helps..


Sender: Dick Schoeller (schoeller@zk3.dec.com)

While phone numbers in the US are all really numeric, there is an alternative
set of letters for each number:

1 - no letters
2 - abc
3 - def
4 - ghi
5 - jkl
6 - mno
7 - prs
8 - tuv
9 - wxy

Notice that there is no q or z.

These letter codes are left over from a period when the exchanges (first three
digits) were assigned according to a mnemonic for the neighborhood or section
of a city to which it applied.  This system is no longer in use.  However,
some businesses will attempt to get a phone number that corresponds to a catch
phrase to help people remember the number (ie: Digital's direct dial PC sales
channel in the US is 1-800-PC-BY-DEC or 1-800-722-9332).


Sender: Foo Say How <sayhow@solomon.technet.sg>

I am surprised that the US designers asked you that.  This is becuase it
is in USA that letter replaces numbers for the phone.  For each number
replace different charaters.  This is quite standard on US phones.


Sender: John Clifford (johnclif@microsoft.com)

This is, obviously, true for the US.  The standard touch tone pad has
twelve keys, arranged in four rows of three keys, with 1 in the top
left corner and 9 on the third row at the far right.  The number 0 is
centered in the fourth row between the '*' key and the '#' key.

Letters are associated with each key, as follows:

1 - no letters
2 - ABC
3 - DEF
4 - GHI
5 - JKL
6 - MNO
7 - PRS
8 - TUV
9 - WXY

The letters 'Q' and 'Z' are not associated with any key.

Years ago, businesses would get the last four or five digits of their
seven-digit phone number to spell out names or acronyms that were
meaningful in the context of their business.  This continues today, but
not at the same scale.  The number 321-TAXI is another (supposedly
easier) way of remembering 321-8299.

Hope this helps, and also hope this isn't merely repeating the obvious.


Sender: John Macallister (macallstr@v1.ph.ox.ac.uk)

I'd be interested in the standard mapping from 0-9 phones to the A-Z characters
if such a standard exists. It also applies to Bank cash machines,etc.


Sender: Jack Rich (jrich@kronos.com)

          The telephones I've used everywhere all seemed pretty
          standard.  They all map the letters ABC to 2, DEF to 3, etc.
          (except no Q or Z mapping).  The numbers 1 and 0 do not have
          letter mappings.  Using letters in a phone number is just an
          easier way to remember the numbers.  I'm sceptical that
          telephones are different in Japan.


Sender: Laurel Dickson-Bull (bull@zigh.HQ.Ileaf.COM)

I'm sure you've had many responses by now, but I'll add
my voice: yes, in the United States, you can dial using
letters like the TAXI example you gave -- this is only because
the phones are labeled with the numbers (0-1) and for each
number (except 1 and 0), there are alpha characters on the
label too. For example, the number 2 also has ABC associated
with it; number 3 has DEF, 4 has GHI, etc.

Good luck with your research.


Sender: Daniel Mahler (mahler@socs.uts.EDU.AU)

I think the letters may just be aliases for numbers,
ie each key (or dial hole, remeber? :)) is assigned a (set of) letter(s),
as well as a number.
I think this was once a fashion even in English speaking countries.
I seem to recall seeing (very) old phones with such dials.


Sender: Nils-Erik Gustafsson (Nils-Erik.Gustafsson@eua.ericsson.se)

In my experience, it is presently common only in the U.S.
Examples are 800-HOLIDAY for Holiday Inn, 800-DIGITAL
for DEC, etc. There is talk about introducing this in
Sweden, but it's not trivial, as we already have a
different letter allocation scheme on ATM (Automatic
Teller Machines) keypads.

The origin of letters on telephone keypads is, by the
way, the oldfashioned way of dialling the exchange as
three letters followed by the local (numerical) number.
This was common both in the U.S. and the UK.
If memory serves me right, London numbers in Mayfair
all started with MAY-. I don't know when letters
disappeared from the UK telephone dials, though.


Sender: Patrick O'Callaghan <poc@usb.ve>

It's just a mapping from triples of letters to digits, thus ABC=2,
DEF=3 and so on. 1 is not mapped, neither is Z. Go figure :-)


Sender: Roy Badami <roy@harlequin.co.uk>

By that, I take it that you mean that the numeric keys are anotated
with letters, so that organizations can choose mnemonic phone numbers.
I don't believe that any country has a telephone system in which phone
numbers are genuinely arbitrary alphanumeric seuqnces.

This is indeed common in the US....

the keypads are annotated as follows


           A B C   D E F
     1       2       3


   G H I   J K L   M N O
     4       5       6


   P R S   T U V   W X Y
     7       8       9



             0


so to dial 321TAXI you'd dial 321 8294
note that I (India) does not map to 1 (One)
and O (Oscar) does not map to 0 (Zero) so care is required.
Note also that the system lacks Q and Z.

This is a common source of confusion when US advertizing literature
quotes numbers like this, and people outside the US are unsure how to
call them.

For completeness, I also should mention that back in the seventies,
the UK used a similar system.  If you go back far enough, all the STD
codes were mnemonic, based on the first two letters of the city
(Cambridge was 0CA3, and is still 0223 to this day).  Numbers in
all-figure areas, (01 for london, 061 for Manchester, etc) all
consisted of an exchange name and 4 digits, and you dialed them by
dialing the first three letters of the name.  Hence, to dial the
number MEDlock 4123, you'd dial 633 4123.  These days the letters have
been done away with, of course, and that medlock number would now just
be 061-633 4213.

The UK system was slightly different from the US one.  It is no longer
in use, but I mention it becuase you may still encounter some old dial
phones in the UK which are anotated in this system.


           A B C   D E F
     1       2       3


   G H I   J K L    M N
     4       5       6


   P R S   T U V   W X Y
     7       8       9


            O Q
             0


The only difference is that O (Oscar) and Q are on 0 (Zero).

Th UK system still lacks a Z, though I believe that in later years
this, too, may have been asigned to zero.

Hope this info is of use....


Sender: robm@redact (Rob Moore - Hairy Gothic Type)

The only country I can think of is the US. A colleague of mine tells me
that they use the letters in advertising for some products. For example a
pizza place in the states has the jingle, Phone Pizza to go on
081 987 TOGO. The letters, which are in blocks of three, are dialed for
the rest of the number.

Is this what you wanted ?


Sender: Sini Fernandez <sinif@sco.COM>

In the US all telephone (and automated teller machine) keypads have
letters associated with the numbers on the keypad.  I became painfully
aware of this difference in keypads during a recent trip to England
and France.  I tried to use the automated teller machines to get cash,
but was thwarted by the fact that my PIN (personal id number) is
actually a word which I spell out every time I use the machines at
home.  Coming across a machine with no letters printed on each number
meant that I couldn't punch in my id number and therefore couldn't
get any cash!

The US keypads look like this:

	1	2	3
		ABC	DEF
	
	4	5	6
	GHI	JKL	MNO

	7	8	9
	PRS	TUV	WXY

	*	0	#