Wright-Patterson moves to 7-digit dialing

  • Published
  • By Amy Rollins
  • Skywrighter Staff
WRIGHT PATTERSON AIR FORCE BASE, Ohio --  Dialing a telephone for an office-to-office call at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base will require using the seven-digit commercial number starting Aug. 1, but base personnel may start doing so now.

Robert Eastep, chief of requirements, Voice Systems Section, 88 Communications Squadron (88 CS), said the move is a standardization of telephone switches Air Force-wide. Dialing DSN numbers will not change.

Second Lt. Charlotte Merritt, deputy, Infrastructure Flight, 88 CS, cited Section 3.2.6 of Technical Order 00-33A-1108, which states, "All existing voice systems, and new systems, will transition to, or be installed with, a seven-digit intra-base dialing plan correlating to the seven-digit commercial telephone numbers assigned to the base. Therefore, only seven-digit dialing is authorized. Any capability to dial less than seven digits is not authorized."
Merritt said people who continue to dial five digits after Aug. 1 will get a recording and will have to hang up and start over.

"Hopefully people will adjust well," she said. "The full prefix will be necessary. It will be breaking an old habit and forming a new one."

Frank Rich, supervisor, Voice Systems Section, 88 CS, said the five-digit system was implemented in 1982 when Wright-Patterson Air Force Base received its first telephone switch. Having worked on base since before that time, Rich said he feels it's just as easy to dial seven digits as it is five digits now.

"It's no different than your home phone," he said.

If a facility has a large number of telephones that need to be relabeled to seven digits, personnel may submit a telephone service request at https://www.tsf.wpafb.af.mil/default.aspx. The 88 CS will re-label instruments free of charge.