[Congressional Record Volume 140, Number 40 (Thursday, April 14, 1994)]
[House]
[Page H]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Printing Office [www.gpo.gov]


[Congressional Record: April 14, 1994]
From the Congressional Record Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov]

 
               D.C. PHONE COMMUNICATION NEEDS IMPROVEMENT

  THE SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from American Samoa [Mr. Faleomavaega] is recognized for 5 
minutes.
  Mr. FALEOMAVAEGA. Mr. Speaker, we have been hearing a lot about the 
information superhighway which will ease our lives in the future. But 
any such superhighway will need road signs, so that we can find our 
way, and my review of an existing part of that system--the local phone 
service here in Washington--suggests that low-tech ignorance and 
insensitivity can exist in even the most state-of-the-art electronic 
network.
  More specifically, if you use the local phone book, you will have a 
very hard time reaching most of the islands in the South Pacific. This 
is the case because the local phone company has not chosen to list the 
country codes of all the nations of the world.
  A friend tried to make some calls to the Pacific. First, he found 
that the Marshall Islands, formerly a U.S. trust territory, and now as 
associated state to the United States, with an Embassy in this city, 
did not have either a country or an area code listed in the phone book. 
The Federated States of Micronesia, also an associated state to the 
United States, is in the same situation. So in Western Samoa.
  Worse is the treatment of the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana 
Islands, a U.S. territory. It is not mentioned in the phone book, but 
Saipan is. It would be like listing Georgetown but not the District of 
Columbia. Saipan is the largest of the Marianas Islands, but is not a 
separate entity.
  The phone company should provide a complete listing of all the 
nations of the world and major islands not just what appears to be a 
list of the big ones and a random sample of the rest.
  Let we point out some of the places listed, and not listed on pages 
28, 29, and 30 of the District of Columbia phone book. There is a 
country code for St. Helena--Napoleon's prison in the South Atlantic--
with a population of 7,000, but none for the Solomon Islands, where 
there are 360,000 people. There are two listings for Greenland, both 
for the island as a whole, and for its capital Godthaab--but none for 
Tonga. Similarly, tiny, land-locked San Marino and Liechtenstein each 
have two listings, but there is not one for Kiribati, the former 
Gilbert Islands, with a population larger than the two European 
enclaves combined.

  In short, there seems to be a strong Eurocentric, Atlantic Basin bias 
at work here. These kinds of listings show a disrespect for the Pacific 
Islands and the people therein.
  Even within the Pacific there is a randomness that suggests a lack of 
either concern or knowledge. But list Palau, but not the Marshalls and 
Micronesia? Why list Nauru with a population of about 8,000, and not 
Vanuatu with a population of 175,000? And why not use the correct name 
of the country, which is Fiji; it has not been Fiji Islands for 
decades.
  This was called to the local phone company's attention, but all we 
got was a lame reply that since they, as a corporation, do not handle 
international calls, they really had no obligation to provide any 
listings at all.
  While I have not studied the matter, I am told that the telephone 
company in Fort Lauderdale handles this matter much better. The 
difference is simple; they seem to list all the nations in the world, 
and just use smaller type; why can't that be done here?
  Meanwhile, thanks to another insensitivity on the part of the 
national phone system the U.S. territories in the Pacific are all 
treated like foreign countries. You have to dial 011 and then a country 
code to reach Palau, Guam, the Northern Marianas and my own American 
Samoa. You can just dial 1 and an area code to all of Canada, to Puerto 
Rico, to the U.S. Virgin Islands, and to most of the other nations in 
the Caribbean. Some places are more equal than others.
  Fixing the dialing system to the Pacific islands would be 
complicated, I am sure; but the local phone company can remedy the 
problem with the country codes in the next edition of the phone books. 
It does not seem to be too much to ask.

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