Backstory: In area codes, 212 is the only-est number
The ostentatious prefix for 'the city of bosses' is a pricey must-have – and not just in New York.
from the March 28, 2007 edition
Page 3 of 4
How one acquires 212 numbers for resale is a more old-fashioned story about serendipity, ingenuity, and business instincts. Pugliese discovered the gourmet cellphone market by accident after putting a 212 number he'd been assigned – but found disagreeable – up for sale on eBay. When someone offered him $75, he knew he was onto something. But he didn't know how to get more 212 numbers. So he did the sensible thing: He dreamed up a few sequences he knew would be attractive – ending in 7000, or 4444, for example – and dialed them hoping to persuade whoever answered to sell.
To his surprise, a recording answered. He'd stumbled onto T-Mobile's cellphone limbo, the place temporary numbers go after being used, but before being recycled. All he had to do was transfer them to his name, a trick he discovered after many hours of conversation with customer service reps. Pugliese talked to the Monitor on the condition that the exact details of his technique not be reported.
"I'm not a bad kid," he says. "But I'm making a little bit of a killing right now."
Legally he's no "bad kid," say analysts and Federal Communications Commission officials. No rules exist addressing the sale of phone numbers between individuals, says a spokesman for the FCC, which regulates telephone carriers. But, adds Doug Williams, an analyst at JupiterResearch in New York, a phone number "is not a possession of a consumer. It's a possession of a carrier." And if history is any indication, it's the carriers that might object. In perhaps the most famous (aborted) phone number sale ever, a 212 version of the number in the 1982 hit song "867-5309/Jenny" showed up for sale on eBay in 2004. Bids reportedly reached $80,000 before Verizon, saying the number didn't belong to the seller, shut the auction down.
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