Collier, Lee Counties To Keep 941 Area Code ... For Now

Wednesday, May 19, 1999

By MICHAEL PELTIER, Tallahassee Correspondent

TALLAHASSEE - Telephone customers throughout Southwest Florida will keep their 941 area code at least for the next couple of years, state telephone regulators ruled Tuesday in a decision that took many telephone industry representatives by surprise.

A three-member panel of the Florida Public Service Commission took a little over a half hour to scrap plans to set up a new area code for callers in Sarasota, Manatee and Charlotte counties and to leave Lee, Collier and a host of inland counties still using the 941 area code.

Instead, the panel voted unanimously to keep intact the 941 area code for all gulf coastal counties from Manatee to the northern tip of Monroe, saying the coastal region should remain within a single code to alleviate - for as long as possible - the confusion of changing telephone numbers. The section of Monroe County that is in the 305 area code, including the Florida Keys, will not be changed.

Under the plan adopted Tuesday, inland counties of Polk, Hardee, Desoto, Hendry, Glades, Highlands, and Okeechobee will receive a new three-digit area code. Those counties are now under the 941 umbrella.

Most telephone customers in Manatee, Sarasota, Charlotte, Lee, Collier, and Monroe counties would keep their existing 941 area code. Some residents living on the eastern edges of the six counties, however, may get the new area code, depending on the first three digits of their local telephone number.

The switch is necessary to accommodate growth in the telephone market and comes less than five years after the 941 area code was created. The new area code boundaries will kick in on a voluntary basis on Sept. 20. Beginning May 22, 2000, callers will be required to use the new area code.

Commission staff members estimated the new area code regions will allow coastal customers to keep their existing telephone numbers for at least 3.5 years, after which the 941 region may have to be split.

Inland residents of the newly defined area code won't have to worry about another change for nearly nine years, a relative lifetime in an era of exploding telecommunications growth.

The plan was crafted by PSC Chairman Joe Garcia, who said he based the split on economic and demographic factors.

Charlene Timothy, a Realtor with VIP Realty on Sanibel Island, applauded the commission's ruling Tuesday, saying that postponing an area code change was the right thing to do.

Timothy and others met with Garcia and other commissioners at a public hearing in Fort Myers earlier this year to voice their concerns about an area code change.

For businesses, any area code change represents a major expense as signs and business cards must be replaced. Cellular phones and other electronic equipment, such as security systems, also must be reprogrammed.

"They came down here and listened and they were fair," Timothy said of the three commissioners who voted on the relief plan. "This decision today proves that."

Garcia said the plan is the most logical of more than a dozen alternatives presented to the commission, even though it may likely require regulators to revisit the issue in less than five years, a traditional benchmark for area code changes.

"We can do the split there now and then come back in three to four years if we have to," Garcia said. "I believe we may not have to."

Instead, Garcia said, the commission plans to work with federal communications officials, who largely regulate the allocation of area codes, to give the state more say so in how area codes are distributed.

The commission had originally scheduled the new phone numbers to commence on a voluntary basis in July, but industry representatives successfully argued that such a deadline would not give them enough time to reroute emergency 911 calls in some areas of the newly created region.

The industry is also testing its system in June and July for Y2K compatibility, to ensure the systems are ready for 2000. Such testing coupled with the necessary 911 changes would be too much, too fast, Caswell said.