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New area code to make all calls 10 digits
Friday, December 31, 1999 By Mike Bucsko and Ken Zapinski, Post-Gazette Staff Writers
Get ready to exercise those digits -- we're getting a new area code that will require people to dial at least 10 numbers for every call.
And people calling outside their area code, say a 412 number to a 724 number, will have to dial 1, then 10 digits -- the area code and telephone number. Calls from 412 to 724 at present don't require the 1.
The new area code -- 878 -- was announced yesterday by the North American Numbering Plan Administration, an agency that assigns new area codes to the telecommunications industry in the United States, Canada, Bermuda and 16 Caribbean countries.
The new 878 area code will be an overlay, which means it will blanket the area now covered by 412 and 724. By mid-2001, new business and residential customers should be assigned telephone exchanges within the 878 area code, said Rebecca Barnhart, spokeswoman for NeuStar Inc. in Washington, D.C. An exact timetable will be determined when a regional telecommunications group meets in two weeks, she said.
When 878 is in place, all telephone customers will be required to dial 10-digit numbers for local calls. If you are in the 412 area and want to call Uncle Ernie down the street, also in the 412 area code, you'll have to dial the area code and his telephone number. Same goes for a call to Aunt Ella in the 724 area code, except you'll also have to dial 1 first.
And if Aunt Ella and Uncle Ernie get new cellular telephones after the middle of 2001, you'll likely be dialing "1-878" before the numbers.
There was little government involvement, outside of notification, required for the birth of the new area code.
NeuStar Inc.'s predecessor, Communications Industry Services of Lockheed Martin IMS, notified the state Public Utility Commission in August that it would begin implementing the overlay plan unless the regulators objected by Dec. 1.
The PUC stepped into the 412-724 controversy several years ago because the telecommunications industry could not agree on the best way to implement the 724 area code, PUC spokesman Eric Levis said. The result then was that most of Allegheny County retained the 412 area code, while outlying counties were switched to 724.
This time around, there is no such dissension so the PUC didn't get involved, Levis said.
Southwestern Pennsylvania will become the 10th area in the United States to add an overlay area code, Barnhart said. Philadelphia added two new overlay area codes earlier this year, joining Atlanta, Cape Canaveral, Fla., Dallas, Denver, Houston, Manhattan, Miami and the state of Maryland.
Unlike the addition of 724 within the old 412 area, the 878 area code will not require any customers to switch their current telephone numbers to a new area code. But it will add another area code to some municipalities, such as Moon and Plum, that were split with the 412 and 724 area codes.
"Given the option of an overlay or a split, I'd rather have an overlay," said state Rep. John Pippy, R-Moon. "They've already split my district, so I'm already calling 10 digits."
Some companies prepared for the inevitability of another area code after 724 began on Feb. 1, 1998.
Security Systems of America, a residential and commercial security firm in Wilkinsburg, began programming its new alarm installations with a toll-free telephone number after the last area code switch to prevent costly alterations each time new area codes were assigned, said Andrew Nesky, the company's administrator.
"This is the way that telecom people have decided they are going to solve their problems and we have no choice but to adapt to it," Nesky said.
The addition of 878 was caused by the impending expiration of available exchanges in the 412 and 724 area codes, Barnhart said. The exchange is the three digits that follow the area code.
In October, members of a regional group of telecommunications companies determined that the 412 area code was "in jeopardy," a term which means the amount of available exchanges in the area code would run out sooner than predicted, at the end of next year, she said.
Of the nearly 800 telephone exchanges in the 412 area code, about 160 remain available. Some of them will have to be reserved for new service providers, Barnhart said.
There are 210 exchanges remaining in the 724 area code, she said.
It's not that there is a shortage of unused phone numbers in the 412 and 724 area codes. Even with the explosive growth of computers, fax machines, cellular phones and pagers, plenty of numbers remain.
Fewer than one-third of the nearly 8 million possible phone numbers in 412 were in use when the 724 area code was created in 1998.
The problem is the numbers of companies wanting to sell us the wonders of modern telecom service. Each of them needs numbers to distribute to their customers. And the way the system is set up, if a company needs even one number, it's given 10,000 for its inventory.
Thanks to the telephone network's 1940s-era routing system, numbers in Pennsylvania are only distributed to companies by exchange -- 555-0000 through 555-9999, for instance. So if a paging company has a dozen customers in a given area, the remaining 9,988 numbers go unused but are unavailable to any other company.
"We have to stop squandering our numbers," state Consumer Advocate Irwin Popowsky said.
The PUC is trying. In 1997, it told telecom companies to begin distributing numbers in 1,000-number blocks instead of 10,000 at a time. After some companies protested, the Federal Communications Commission stopped the PUC, saying state regulators did not have authority to make such changes. Since then, the FCC has permitted states to ask for special permission to distribute by 1,000-number blocks.
Illinois and New York began trials this year, and the PUC last week asked the FCC for similar permission, Popowsky said, "to prevent the further collapse of the area codes. But I think it's too late to save 412 and 724 ... They were in jeopardy almost immediately because of the crazy way we hand out numbers."
While an overlay doesn't require current customers to change phone numbers, there is a downside, Popowsky said. "Most people will not be able to remember all 10 digits. We'll all rely on programming our phone dialers," he said.
The 878 area code will be phased in over the next 18 or 19 months. In the next several months, telephone customers will be asked to begin dialing 10-digit numbers for every call. Then in 2001, the new exchanges will be doled out and 10-digit dialing will be mandatory.
The future holds promise of even more button-pushing.
Eventually, all of the three-digit area codes will be in use. Current industry estimates predict that will occur around 2030, give or take five years. The telecom industry is looking at several solutions, including four-digit area codes, eight-digit telephone numbers or both.
The industry already is wrestling with the question because adapting the system to handle such a fundamental change would take decades. Consider what happened when the original pool of area codes -- those with either 1 or 0 as the middle digit -- approached exhaustion in 1994.
Telephone companies had begun in the 1960s preparing their equipment for the day when area codes would have the numbers 2 through 9 as their middle digits. It took them nearly 30 years.
But then we know all about how difficult it can be for computers to deal with two simple digits.
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