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New Area Code Needs Tax Old Network
April 22: Help! Call a secret agent to crack these area codes
In the beginning, there was 415. And 415 lived 12 years and begat 408.
And in their midst arose Silicon Valley, which begat pagers and modems and cell phones. And lo, the makers of these devices were fruitful and multiplied, and their messages filled the heavens and the Earth.
Starting today, this tower of Babel gains one more new offspring: 831. Most of Santa Cruz, San Benito and Monterey counties will leave the 408 area code, along with small pockets of Santa Clara, San Mateo, San Luis Obispo and Merced counties. Both numbers will work for the next six months, but as of January, callers will have to use 831.
Consumers often blame Pacific Bell for the inconveniences associated with changing area codes, but more responsibility lies with the way its customers are scattering into separate tribes served by other companies.
Because of the anti-competitive architecture of the nation's phone system, which was designed for a monopoly, the transition to a competitive market with multiple types of service is gobbling up numbers at a rate few predicted even five years ago. This huge demand is feeding the nationwide boom under which the number of California area codes has surged from seven to 21 just since 1991.
``Competition is good, but it's difficult to implement competition,'' said Natalie Billingsley, a telecommunications analyst with the Public Utilities Commission. ``It wasn't too difficult to implement long-distance competition because of the way it uses the phone network. But when you come to local competition, it's incredibly difficult.''
The competition Billingsley had in mind was the increasing use of pagers, mobile phones and even local phone service provided by companies other than the historic local provider, whether Pacific Bell, GTE or tiny companies like the Pinnacles Telephone Co. of rural Monterey County. Although few if any customers in area code 831 yet have a choice of where to buy home service, competition has reconfigured the region's technical landscape.
From the moment of the new area code's birth, 20 percent of its assigned phone numbers are the property of companies other than Pacific Bell. The percentage of numbers assigned to other companies is likely to be even higher in urban area codes such as 408 or 650, the most attractive markets for Pac Bell's competitors, said Joanne Edelman, senior code administrator with the North American Numbering Plan Administration.
The Way The System Works
But these figures don't mean that 20 percent of the region's customers are really buying service from someone other than the dominant local telephone company.
Pac Bell's competitors have claimed one-fifth of the assigned phone numbers in 831 because of how the phone system works today. Companies wishing to offer service must acquire numbers in every phone company central office they wish to serve, of which there are about 600 in California and dozens throughout a typical area code.
Today, even a company wishing to sign up only one customer served by a given central office must acquire a block of 10,000 numbers that all share the same first three digits.
``When you had only one company in an area, if I've got 10,000 numbers it might last me five years,'' said Doug Hescox, the California-Nevada code administrator. ``Now, I could have 10, 15, 20 different service providers in that area. It's relatively inefficient to assign each group 10,000 numbers.''
Just how inefficient? Consider a pager company wishing to set up shop throughout San Jose, a city served by 35 separate central offices. It would need to acquire 350,000 numbers before it could sign up one customer, said Jerome Candelaria, senior attorney with California Cable TV Association.
Multiply those 350,000 numbers by each company providing pagers or mobile phones, and the magnitude of the number squeeze becomes apparent.
``If you're a car salesman, how effective are you if you don't have any cars on the lot?'' Hescox asked. ``Communications companies need to have inventory if they're in business.''
Hard To Connect
The reason they need so much excess inventory is that the switches upon which the nation's phone system relies were designed to accommodate only one phone company.
``Not only were they not ever designed to interconnect with anything outside, in some cases they probably had built-in systems to keep anyone from interconnecting,'' Pac Bell spokesman John Britton said.
These days, that's something of a sore point with Pac Bell's would-be competitors, on account of the finite stores of useful numbers in any area code. Theoretically, there are 7.92 million phone numbers per area code. But after prefixes such as 911 and 411 are accounted for, and temporarily dormant numbers are removed from the stockpile, the actual roster of useful numbers is closer to 5.5 million to 6 million, Hescox said.
Because the demand exceeds the supply, companies wishing to enter new markets sometimes find themselves unable to acquire all the numbers they need. Hescox said his agency has been using a lottery for about a year to allocate blocks of numbers in the 408 area code.
The near-term solution to the problem is due to arrive by year's end, when the Federal Communications Commission expects companies in large markets to let customers keep their phone number even if they change to another company. For the time being, the only way Pac Bell can do this is by forwarding calls from a customer's existing number to a new one. This solution is part of the problem: It ties up two numbers.
Pac Bell also is counting on relief from technological improvements designed to allow central-office switches to allocate numbers in blocks of 1,000. But this solution only goes so far.
The ultimate solution appears to lie in two areas: Concepts known as pooling and porting, or a different way of assigning codes.
Pooling and porting, which depend on technology that isn't yet available, are different ways of allowing phone companies to acquire numbers one at a time. Pooling would end the assignment of unused numbers; numbers would be doled out only as they enter service. Porting would permit companies to acquire unused numbers from companies that aren't using them.
Solutions Long Way Off
``It's not in an incumbent's best interests to facilitate a new entrant by opening up their large cache of unused numbers,'' Candelaria said, pointing to these solutions as the best way to give competitors a fair shake in a monopoly market.
But these solutions are a long way off. In the near term, the only way to keep large numbers of customers from having to change area codes is by creating new codes atop the existing ones, forcing callers to dial 10 digits instead of seven for local numbers. Additionally, some households with more than one line might have numbers in each area code.
Still, Hescox and Pacific Bell favor this option as the best way to minimize the consumer trauma associated with ordering new business cards and advertising, or reprogramming fax machines, modems and dialers.
``Pac Bell doesn't like to see an area code change because it means disruption for our existing customers,'' Britton said. ``What happens when you have an area code change is somewhere on the order of two-and-a-half to three million customers have to change their numbers.''
But competitors say Pac Bell is motivated less by customer concern and more by desire to hang onto its market. Regulators such as Billingsley are somewhere in the middle.
``The competitors all scream that the incumbents are being jerks and that they're fouling up access to their networks,'' she said. ``The incumbents say `The competitors don't understand, and there's only so much space on our networks.' Basically, there's something on each side. There's some kernel of truth inside all the mudslinging.''
The remaining portion of 408 may not remain intact long. Next year, regulators say, they will have to pare down again.
Hescox said 10-digit dialing is inevitable, whether consumers want it or not. But until that day, he's counting on the consumers to make their will known.
``We want to do what our customers want,'' he said. ``If they think seven-digit dialing is a hill to fight and die on, God bless 'em, we'll be happy to support them.''
Mercury News Staff Writer Jon Healey contributed to this report.