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Businesses Need To
Brace Monday, January 18, 1999 |
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| As St. Charles County says goodbye to the 314 area code
and hello to its 636 replacement later this year, Karen Klar offers two words of advice
about those new business cards and letterheads sure to come with the change. "Plan ahead," she said, laughing. "We printers sure would appreciate it." Klar, customer service manager of St. Peters-based CFM Graphics Inc., says her company hasn't had a deluge of new print orders since the Missouri Public Service Commission announced the new area code last week. An official schedule for introducing gradual use of the new number has not been completed, but for Klar, now is as good a time as any for local businesses to prepare for the transition. Heavy demand for new telephone prefixes within the 314 area code, because of the increased use of pagers, wireless phones, fax machines and modems, resulted in the first area code split of a Missouri metropolitan area. "The codes are running out for a lot of reasons," Commission Economist Ben Childers said. "Business growth in St. Louis is still pretty high." Childers also noted that the Telecommunications Act of 1996 allowed for a surge of new local telephone companies to compete with Southwestern Bell for customers, an option that previously was not allowed. This also depleted available numbers in the area. All of St. Charles County was assigned the 636 area code, as were most of Lincoln, Warren, Franklin and Jefferson counties. Only parts of St. Louis, Montgomery and Washington counties are receiving the new code. The city of St. Louis and roughly the eastern two-thirds of St. Louis County will retain the 314 area code. The change is similar to that of Chicago's area code split in 1997. The downtown and near-Loop areas of the city kept the 312 area code while the rest of the city was assigned a new 773 code. As with the Chicago change, calls previously designated as local calls will remain local calls, but callers from within the new 636 area code will have to dial 10 digits in order to contact residents and businesses within the 314 area code. Long-distance calls to 636 numbers are expected to connect whether 314 or 636 is dialed. The 314 code was expected to run out of numbers this year, even after the 1995 split devising a new 573 code for some distant counties provided room for new 314 numbers. New business cards and stationery will need to be reordered, which is good for printing and graphics businesses like Klar's. But Mark Deney, a sales manager at St. Peters-based Lazerquick printing and graphics services, said he cautions businesses and residents not to make orders too far in advance. Southwestern Bell or other sources are expected to update which customers and residents will be affected by the changes - and when. Wentzville City Administrator Joe McReynolds said his municipality was aware of last week's announcement and plans to order necessary supplies accordingly. One thing he said that the city will not have to worry about getting rid of is extra paper once the 636 code is in effect. "We try not to order much more than a six-month supply (of cards and stationery)," he said. "I don't anticipate that we're going to have reams of paper sitting here." The new code may cause additional work for many businesses and residents, as computerized phone systems and Internet connections will also have to be reprogrammed. But as sweeping as the changes are, they could have been extensive enough to make dialing 10-digit numbers to reach next-door neighbors a reality. The Missouri Public Service Commission was considering implementing an overlay to provide for additional growth instead of the simpler geographic split that will occur, a consideration that had many area residents and municipalities concerned. An overlay would have allowed two or more area codes, such as 314 and 573, to share the same geographic region. Existing customers would keep their local number and the 314 code, but new customers would have received numbers with a new area code. Everyone would have to dial 10 numbers for all local calls, even for calls in the same neighborhood or vicinity. Households or businesses could have been assigned phone lines in more than one code. Although McReynolds says he fondly remembers a time when making a phone call simply involved dialing three digits, he says he and the rest of St. Charles County will eventually get used to the new 636 code. "We're pretty flexible people," he said. "I think it's just one of those things that comes with growth." Dialing 636:
Copyright (c) 1999, St. Louis Post-Dispatch |
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