With the ever-increasing need for new phone numbers (cell phones, modems, etc.), the phone companies have been scrambling to provide new area codes to meet the demand.  This could be a golden opportunity for Alpha developers.

Just think about the problem a little, and you'll realize that anyone with a customer phone list is going to have a major problem when the area code changes.  In fact in the past 8 years, over 271 million telephone numbers have changed their area codes!  This means that up to 38% of old customer phone lists have non-working phone numbers, simply as a result of area code changes!

If the customer phone list is in a small community, it's a pretty simple problem to fix, because all of the phone numbers will change to the new area code.  However, it becomes more difficult in a larger city, because community that used to have just one area code might now have two - the original for some people, and a new one for others.  Now you have to know which ones to change and which to leave the same.  This becomes a bigger problem for businesses that have phone numbers of customers outside their immediate area.  Then, they are faced with changes on a very frequent basis.

How could this affect you?  Well, you could develop a routine for your existing customers that would search the phone numbers, and change the area codes that needed changing.  If you want to be real enterprising, you might even come up with a routine that will import their database into Alpha, make the changes, and then export it back to the original format.

However, there will be many of you that don't want to be bothered with this, but still need to have the problem solved.  In that case, you can contact PhoneSeal, a company that has come up with a solution.  This link will take you to an offer that they have for Alpha Newsletter readers.