Phone numbers

Lately I’ve been struggling with phones, or rather phone numbers, in my new job. For the land line there is a UP trunk number with two local extensions. This is, yes, the notorious one with the not-always-friendly operators.

Touring the university’s Computer Center last month, I stumbled on what they still call the PABX office, but I didn’t find operators entangled in wires. The system is completely modern, a VOIP (Voice Only Internet Protocol) setup, but the operators are overwhelmed with calls asking for phone numbers, and they refer, in a rather low-tech manner, to a huge white board on the wall with the most frequently inquired numbers.

Apart from that trunk line, with operators I can now empathize with, I have direct lines for phone calls, for faxes, even a videoconferencing phone that just quietly sits in a corner.

And the cell phones… My staff insisted I get an official number to give out. I tried dual-SIM phones years ago and found them confusing, so I ended up with two cell phones. The problem is that the official phone keeps disappearing and I end up missing messages. (I know it’s my subconscious making me forget that phone.)

All this confusion has gotten me thinking about how phones have evolved in the Philippines and how a social history of our phone systems is really not so much about the technology as about phone numbers.

Remember that not too long ago, it took years to get a land line. So if you had a phone, you had to be from the upper classes, with the money to apply for a line, and the connections to get, well, a connection. A few days after the 1986 Edsa revolt, I applied for a phone and the clerk strongly hinted that if I gave a little extra (pang-merienda), I could get a line more quickly. An ominous start, I thought, to a new era.

In those ancient times, even if it took economic and political clout to get a phone number, there were still class distinctions. You could tell where someone lived by the phone number. At the top of the social totem pole were numbers starting with 8; that meant you were in Makati or Pasay. But I remember how we would tease people with such numbers: Are you in one of the villages or in Roxas Boulevard’s honky-tonk nightclub district?

Phone numbers starting with 7 or 9 weren’t too bad because you were in San Juan (Greenhills usually) and Quezon City, respectively. The city of Manila, in more prosperous times, had most of the numbers: 6 was for the Santa Mesa area, 5 was for Ermita and Malate, 4 was Chinatown. I can’t quite remember what 3 was, but 2 was for Caloocan and Malabon, which seemed like the other end of the world, but people would whisper that only old-rich families had such numbers.

I saw how phone numbers went from 5 digits to six, and how it seemed a measure of our being underdeveloped compared to Mother America, where they had 7 digits even in the 1960s. We would call relatives in the United States, shouting into the mouthpiece because lines were bad and, well, they were so far away.

It was worse calling long distance locally, and again, the numbers spoke of development, or its lack. When Manila had six digits, Davao, where my father’s relatives were, had four, then crawled into five. During the summers I spent in Davao, my grandmother would insist we call Manila. And that meant going through an operator and struggling with Cebuano… which I think was the reason my grandmother, who spoke no Cebuano at all, would get me to make the long-distance call.

Party line

Life was simpler then—one number per household, sometimes even one number per three or four households. Remember those party lines? They weren’t for parties but were cross lines, sometimes corrupt lines, meaning the phone linemen would get someone an unofficial extension to your line.

Party lines were amazing. You fought with your party line: “Hoy! You’ve been on the phone all day. I need to call my lola in Davao.”

They could listen in as well to your conversations and sometimes they would butt in and offer advice… or a shoulder to lean on if you had problems.

They were tolerable, almost fun, compared to the calls you got at midnight, from the hoi polloi using pay phones, “Alloo, puedeng mag phone pal?”

Fast forward to the cell phone era. Who would have known we’d get to a time when you can pay P40 for your own number, more if you want a special number? There’s a whole cottage industry around the buying and selling of such numbers—for example, lots of 8s for the ethnic Chinese who think it brings in luck and wealth, with costs running to thousands of pesos.

You can’t tell, these days, where a person lives from his/her phone number, but class discrimination still kicks in, as in (and I’ve heard this from my students): “Ay, her boyfriend is on TM only, mine uses Smart.”

Smart or not, people tend to think, too, that it’s smart to have many phones, and numbers. Just having several numbers seems to suggest higher social status, but I’ve always argued that if you have several phone units, people might think you’re some executive’s aliping namamahay (loose translation: live-in slave). Executives don’t carry—or answer—phones.

Suspicious

As for having several phone numbers, I do get suspicious, too, never forgetting how, on the first day I was dean back in 2010, I asked my staff to call one of our drivers and it was like all the secretaries began to call on their phones. Turned out he had three numbers, and the secretaries said that was because he had many girlfriends.

Another time, the daughter of a former officemate of mine sent a text message saying she was now in college and needed financial assistance. I told her to first try the university’s scholarships, and loans. She’d get back to update me, but each time she seemed to have a different number. Which got me thinking: If she’s so hard up, why does she have so many phones? The answer one of my students gave me: “No, sir, it’s the poor who have more numbers now because they run out of load on one number, and then use another one. Or they use different ‘unli’ (unlimited) deals from different providers.”

I also suspect that people have several numbers, from different providers, because, despite all the advances in cell phones, there’s a still lot of inefficiency in the phone systems.

I thought about that the other day while entering a hospital lobby and seeing a man, looking very anxious, with one phone on his left ear and the other on his right. I suspect he was using two different providers to make an urgent call.

I can only hope that the person (or persons) he was trying to call doesn’t have too many phones and phone numbers either. The irony is that the more phone numbers we have now, the more difficult it seems to contact people, especially when you need them most.

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