949 Area-Code Switch Has A Few Hang-Ups

COMMUNICATIONS: Some calls aren't going through; others are, but without 949 being dialed.

October 24, 1998

By LESLIE GORNSTEIN
and RONALD CAMPBELL
The Orange County Register

Scattered phone trouble is causing problems inside and outside the new 949 area code, a week after its use became mandatory.

"We tried calling someone we work with in the 949," said Jason Zaragoza, office manager for an insurance sales company in Long Beach. "And it kept saying, 'You need to dial 949.' Well, we were dialing 949."

Zaragoza's company is a liaison between insurance companies and agents. The mix-up Friday morning delayed a conference call by a half-hour, Zaragoza said. Later, he was able to dial 949 numbers with no problem.

"It is not something that has been bugging me," he said, "but I guess if it happened again, I wouldn't know what to do."

Alison Costa, spokeswoman for the California-Nevada Code Administration, a telecommunications group overseeing the area code switch, could not explain Zaragoza's problem. But she said the most likely culprits for misdirected phone calls are private phone exchanges, or PBXs, which are internal phone systems commonly used by major companies and other institutions to connect to the phone network.

"They need to deal with it internally," Costa said. "It's an individual responsibility."

When an area code changes, every company or institution that calls into the area must reprogram its PBX to recognize the new area code. Until recently, Costa said, recognizing a new area code wasn't an issue for a PBX. If a three-digit number had a 0 or 1 in the middle, it was an area code. If it had another digit in the middle, it was a prefix.

But in 1995 the nation's phone system ran out of area codes with 0's and 1's as middle digits. Suddenly area codes looked just like prefixes, and PBX programmers had to tell their machines which was which.

Companies that keep computerized databases of customers' phone numbers also must reprogram those databases to assign the new area code to selected prefixes.

(A list of the 197 prefixes that switched from 714 to 949 is available on the World Wide Web at www.pacbell.com/about-pb/areacodes/areacodes-714b.html. The prefixes also are listed in phone directories published since February 1997, Costa said.)

The switch to 949 has been in the works for nearly two years. Telephone companies began routing calls using the new area code in April. The switch became mandatory Oct. 17.

Two days later, Ken Domer, an aide to county Supervisor Tom Wilson, was working late in his Santa Ana office. He needed to fax something to his boss in Laguna Niguel. But each time he dialed the number with the new area code, nothing happened. Just for kicks, he dialed the number minus area code. The fax went through.

For the past week staffers in Wilson's office have been trying to figure out how to call his south-county constituents, who all have the 949 area code. Using the code works for some. Using just a seven-digit number works for others.

"We're doing it whatever way works," Domer said. It's a "random crapshoot."

The problem seems particularly troublesome for people using toll-free numbers. Newport Beach boat dealer Mark Michaelson uses an 800 number tied to several 949 numbers. But when customers call, he said, they get a message saying the area code has been changed to 714 — which it hasn't. Dialing 714 doesn't help either: Callers get the same message.

"Oh my God, it is a nightmare," Michaelson said, noting that a 10-minute phone delay can cost him a $160,000 boat sale. "And this damages our business reputation."

He said calls to Pacific Bell have not brought a solution.

"We are at the Long Beach boat show right now, and this is an incredibly important time for us," he said via cellular phone, which seemed to be working fine. "I am a little tweaked."