I grew up in a small town in the US before cell phones were ubiquitous.
When we started getting cell phones, the numbers all had the same first six digits. The last four were assigned in order of provisioning.
My friend and I got our phones at nearly the same time, so our numbers were like 555-555-1004 and 555-555-1008.
This came in handy when I was going to visit him years later, and my phone died on the plane. I didn’t have anyone’s cell number memorized other than my parents (555-555-1013) and his thanks to the numeric similarity. (We kept the same phone numbers when we moved away from home.)
In this town, landline phones also all shared the same first six digits. Before cell phones got into the mix in the late 1990s, people could (and did) use 5 digits to represent phone numbers: 3-XXXX where the 3 referred to the first digit of the “exchange code”. The next town was 8-XXXX, etc.
When we started getting cell phones, the numbers all had the same first six digits. The last four were assigned in order of provisioning.
My friend and I got our phones at nearly the same time, so our numbers were like 555-555-1004 and 555-555-1008.
This came in handy when I was going to visit him years later, and my phone died on the plane. I didn’t have anyone’s cell number memorized other than my parents (555-555-1013) and his thanks to the numeric similarity. (We kept the same phone numbers when we moved away from home.)
In this town, landline phones also all shared the same first six digits. Before cell phones got into the mix in the late 1990s, people could (and did) use 5 digits to represent phone numbers: 3-XXXX where the 3 referred to the first digit of the “exchange code”. The next town was 8-XXXX, etc.