Posted on 07/23/2006 4:15:21 PM PDT by South40
LOS ANGELES – Starting Wednesday, seven-digit dialing will be a thing of the past for a broad swath of coastal Los Angeles County.
Residents of such posh enclaves as Santa Monica, Malibu and Brentwood will be among the first Californians to be required to dial 11 digits each time they pick up the phone, even if they are calling a next-door neighbor.
The change comes as part of the state's first-ever area code overlay, in which future phone numbers within a region receive a new area code while existing numbers keep the old one. It contrasts with the more common area code split, in which a region is divided and each new geographic area gets its own area code. The overlay of 424 on the 310 area code is taking effect after a lengthy fight, and many of those who resisted it have a message for consumers and business owners in other parts of California.
“I would imagine that, especially in heavily populated areas like L.A. and San Diego and the San Francisco Bay Area, that this is going to happen more and more,” said Kathryn Dodson, president of the Santa Monica Chamber of Commerce. “So our annoyance is going to eventually become everyone's annoyance.”
Critics of the overlay cite the hassle of mandatory 11-digit dialing – which the Federal Communications Commission requires with overlays in order to preserve competition among phone companies – as well as the time and energy residents must expend updating speed-dial and cellular directories.
Phone companies counter that overlays are more convenient than splits because businesses can keep their existing numbers and therefore do not have to update stationery and notify clients.
Still, critics also say the overlay could be dangerous because some security systems rely on phone lines that dial automatically, and because some elderly or disabled people may adjust poorly to the change.
Then there's the prestige factor.
“People are very aware of the 310 area code,” said Darren Lewis, a manager in the music industry who works in Santa Monica. “It has a cachet.”
Now, if Lewis adds another phone line to his office, it will start with 424, which he expects will confuse the many people he deals with on the East Coast.
“People are going to wonder where you are,” he said.
Every area code in the United States has just under 8 million usable numbers, according to the Federal Communications Commission. Overlay critics acknowledge that population growth and the spread of new technology have the potential to tap out the supply in bustling regions, but they have suggested that phone companies still have many unused numbers.
Industry officials deny they are hoarding phone numbers and cast the overlay as the least onerous solution to a very real problem.
“Absolutely we are reaching capacity in this area code,” said Verizon spokesman Jon Davies. “We were reaching capacity about six years ago.”
Much of Los Angeles was covered by the 213 area code until the 310 was created for the city's west side in 1991. The 310 area code was split in 1997, when the 562 code was added.
Soon after that, the telecommunications industry began pushing state regulators for an overlay in the rapidly growing region, which stretches from Los Angeles' wealthy coastal communities to Compton and south Los Angeles.
Consumer activists and politicians mobilized against the plan, however, and in 1999 the California Public Utilities Commission voted 3-2 to halt it. At the state's behest, phone companies found other ways to conserve numbers.
Such efforts helped California continue to stave off overlays even as they spread to other states, including New York, Ohio, Maryland, Georgia, New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Michigan.
However, geographic splits continued throughout California, creating smaller and smaller area code boundaries. Meanwhile, the phone companies continued to complain of shrinking rosters of available numbers, and last year the CPUC took up another 310 overlay request.
“We've extended the life of the area code for those six years, but now, once again, demand for cell phones and pagers and fax machines and all the new technology that's coming down the line has really taken over the availability of numbers,” said Verizon spokesman Davies.
State Sen. Debra Bowen, D-Redondo Beach, sees it differently.
“Some of this is the old boy crying wolf problem,” she said. “Some of the carriers were screaming they didn't have numbers, and here it's been seven years and nobody's been denied a telephone number in the 310 area code.”
Despite the renewed objections of Bowen and other politicians and chambers of commerce, the CPUC voted unanimously to approve the plan last August.
Analysts see a number of reasons why the overlay passed this time, from the new political makeup of the CPUC and divisions among critics to the ever-increasing pressures of population and technology.
In Texas it's 10 digit dialing.
True, but I hear about more and more people who are now using their cell phones as their ONLY phone -- and simply doing away with the land line altogether.
You need to spend some time in some competent telecom books. Pay attention to the development of the switching network and dialing plans. The choice of 7 digit number was made because that's the ideal number for humans to remember. Early in the life of the network, the second digit of the 3 digit prefix disallowed the use of digits 0 and 1. That is how the area codes were discerned. The needs for additional numbers and the advent of electronic switching allowed the use of 0 or 1 in the second digit. That expanded the available phone numbers in an area code, but required dialing a country code first. The country code for the United States is conveniently "1".
Area code splits are a hell of a lot of work. I've worked a bunch of them during the years at PacBell. Doing an overlay is comparatively simple.
I remember when they did it in Los Angeles from 6 to 7 digits to increase the numbers.
You're old enough to remember that point in time. The original switching machines were designed for numbers in the range of 0000->9999. The digits above that were used to select the outgoing trunks to another switching office. The "magic" 3 digit area code with 1 or 0 as the second digit did the long distance mapping from area code to area code. The next 3 digits did the end office selection. The last 4 digits mapped to a customer line.
That sounds like such a good idea, but if you have more than 2 people living in a house, and the main two are gone, with their cells, the others are left w/o a phone.
Area codes were instituted way back when rotary phones were "state-of-the-art," so they were assigned in a way that allowed the largest number of users to take the least amount of time to dial the numbers. All area codes back then had a 1 or 0 as the middle digit. The largest cities were assigned area codes with a 1 in the middle and with low numbers as the first and third digits -- since these would dial the fastest on a rotary phone (it took several moments to dial a 9 or a 0 back then, when you had to wait for the dial to rotate all the way back into place before dialing the next number).
This is how New York City ended up with an area code of 212 -- the area code that dialed faster than any other on the old rotary phones. Los Angeles (213) and Chicago (312) were next in line in terms of "dial speed" followed by Detroit (313), Dallas (214), Pittsburgh (412), St. Louis (314), etc. Notice how the original area codes for many of the large cities in the country all had a "1" in the middle -- including Philadelphia (215), Cleveland (216), Indianapolis (317), Milwaukee (414), San Francisco (415), Toronto, Ontario (416), etc.
Conversely, most area codes with a 0 in the middle and high numbers for the first and third digits were very rural (or had very limited phone service) at the time these area codes were put in place. The most cumbersome area code to dial was the one for the "Inland Empire" of California (909), followed by others like central New Jersey (908), the Dominican Republic (809), Hawaii (808), Alaska (907), Newfoundland (709), western Ontario (807), and the area that is now Chicago's southern suburbs (708).
“People are very aware of the 310 area code,” said Darren Lewis, a manager in the music industry who works in Santa Monica. “It has a cachet.”
LOL! Somehow, Mr. Lewis, I think you'll live through this.
Now, if Lewis adds another phone line to his office, it will start with 424, which he expects will confuse the many people he deals with on the East Coast.
“People are going to wonder where you are,” he said.
Eventually they'll figure it out. Buck up, cowboy! It ain't the end of the world.
I think Ca-li-for-nee-uh has 41 area codes now, 7 in the SF bay area alone.
11? Most of Texas is 10 digit dialing. Where is the extra digit?
I formerly worked in the yellow pages industry. If I understand it correctly, in California, they dial 1 before the number, even if it is a local call. They have not had 10 digit dialing up until now.
Someone mentioned 713 & 281 in Houston as being a geographical split. When Houston and Dallas got new area codes in the mid 90's, there was originally a geographic split. Houston inside of Beltway 8 kept 713, while outlying areas got the new 281. Same in Dallas, where everything inside of LBJ Freeway kept 214, and the outlying areas got 972. After a few years, in an attempt to preserve phone numbers, those imaginary boundaries were removed, and 713/281 and 214/972 were overlaid on top of each other. In addition, 832 was overlaid on top of 713/281, and 469 was overlaid on top of 214/972.
In Houston, it is possible to have a 713 number for your landline, a 281 number for your fax line, and an 832 number for your cell phone. Same in Dallas with 214/972/469.
" The choice of 7 digit number was made because that's the ideal number for humans to remember."
Those people shouldn't have telephones.
I probably know 20 phone #s that I use, my SS#, bank account #s, etc. and never write any of them down.
10 digits in Mass.: 617-XXX-XXXX, 978-YYY-YYYY, etc.
It'd odd when I visit a state with only one area code and on the radio, on TV, or in the papers when they give a number out (like in an ad or something) it's _only_ 7 digits!
We still have to dial 1 before the area code, except on a cell phone.
I'm currently in 760, 858 is a few miles south, as is 619 and we have to dial 1 before the number.
At my home in Glendale, 818, I have to dial 1 to dial my office 6 miles away in Loa Angeles.
You have to dial "1" first before dialing an area code. That's the 11th digit.
I routinely dial huge strings of digits to reach people. The company card access number is 11 digits to the prompt, 14 digits for my "pin", then 11 digits to call a number in the United States. It's particularly irritating when I call my colleague at his office in Mclean, VA and discover he's not there. I get to do the whole 36 digit dance again for his cell phone.
I would love to automate this nonsense, but the carrier has an indeterminate period between dialing the access number and the time it will start accepting digits. If you don't wait out the double beep and voice announcement, you may have to dial the whole 11 digit access sequence again. Very annoying.
No kidding - how strange that they are just now doing this! Of course, we don't have to dial 1 unless it's long-distance; ours is just 10 digits. Honestly, I thought everybody had it now.
No .. actually it started with the new internet phones. I already have to dial 10 numbers even if I call a local number.
We live in a town so small that when someone asks for a phone number, you just give them the last four digits.
Long distance? It's just a money making scheme. With everything so computerized these days, it doesn't really cost them extra.
We're also running out of IP addresses lol. That's being fixed though.
but if you have a cell in the same area you would has a 3 digit cell network "area code" prefix that would only be for cell phones
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