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.
Hehe That reminds me of being at my grandmother's house as a child. She had a party line at the time. I remember picking up the phone to use it and hearing people on there, and couldn't figure out where the people were, and why they were on her phone.
Memory is a learned trait, you aren't borne with it.
I was trained by my father. When I was about 3 he used to take me with him on construction jobs and when we got home he would quiz me about what different men in different trades were doing.
I I couldn't answer he would say pay attention what is going on around you, you might need it someday.
By the time I went to school I never wanted to hear anything more than once.
By the second grade the teachers figured that out and would find something else to do in the school after they had gone over something once.
The rest of grammer school I don't think I ever spent more than 2 hours a day in class, they couldn't stand me harassibg them.
We wouldn't have this problem if the phone companies would allow hexadecimal dialing.
KRAMER: Oh! Jeez! Well, you've got a maid. It's a whole different world downtown-- ... she's a 646.
ELAINE: What? What is that?
JERRY: That's the new area code. They've run out of 242s, so all the new numbers are 646.
ELAINE: I was a 718 when I first moved here. I cried every night.
Many under the age of 25 don't have a POTS subscription in their homes unless it's to receive a DSL signal.
Business clings to POTS at their gateway but use wireless on the inside. Within a decade VOIP will replace POTS and 11 digits, or more will be common.
Think about it. IPv4 has up 15 keystrokes to input on the keyboard and URLs can be up to 26 characters plus the domain identifiers.
11 keystrokes are cheap!
Yes I know... an it is why we now have this constant area code reshuffling mess in the North American numbering plan... it's a case of a very questionable business logic trumping a more logical engineering plan ... it has made a mess ...HDTV is some what hose up for the same business politic reason (at least that my opinion)
Ours in Hawaiian Gardens was HA55772.
Hawaiian Gardens has changed since then.
Whittier was OXford. Don't ya just long for the simple times???
I am sure that the whole area has changed. We have lived in Tenn. for 35 years.
The fact is, the “1” accommodates faster call handling than just using 7 and 10 digit numbers. On manually dialed calls, the “1” tells the equipment to expect 10 more digits before routing the call. If no “1” is dialed, the equipment expects 7 digits and routes the call as soon as the 7th digit is dialed. Without the “1”, equipment accepting manually dialed calls, would have to wait after the 7th digit to see if 3 more digits were coming (inter-digit time) before routing the call. Cell phones don’t have this problem even on manually dialed calls since the called numbers are sent out in on fast data stream when the SEND button is pressed so the 7 or 10 digit number issue is resolved instantly.
For you younger folks, substitute “press” for “dial” when you read this.
For those of you that find old named prefixes nostalgic, I’ve had the following in my lifetime:
NOrmandy Hollywood
CLinton Eagle rock
THornwall Burbank
CItrus Glendale
JEfferson Santa Ana
WIndsor Palmdale
Somehow even Zenith seemed more personal than 9-1-1.
Tennessee is awesome; my wife and I honeymooned in Nashville. We vacationed in the Smokey Mountains a few years back. We've even considered retiring there, though I'll admit, I'm leaning toward Idaho.
The Inland Empire's 909 area code is the result of a split that took place about 12 years ago. The IE, parts of East LA County, and Orange County were ALL originally 714.
This is ridiculous. 310 is for the West Side. The cell providers that issue numbers to people that dont live/work near the area should be punished. Why can't inglehood dial the full number instead of the residents that contribute more to the state tax than any other code....
The time spent changing contact numbers for all 310 members contributing to state gdp is lost revenue for the state that could be otherwise be spent issuing more food stamps....
This is ridiculous. 310 is for the West Side. The cell providers that issue numbers to people that dont live/work near the area should be punished. Why can't inglehood dial the full number instead of the residents that contribute more to the state tax than any other code....
The time spent changing contact numbers for all 310 members contributing to state gdp is lost revenue for the state that could be otherwise be spent issuing more food stamps....
This happened in Atlanta about ten years ago...
LOL also what about 911?
1 911 911 911?
I remember reading somewhere that part of the reason if not the reason for the "running out of numbers" problem dealt with the way blocks of phone numbers are allocated, specifically in blocks of 25,000 regardless of the number of phones in a given area. In other words, a lot of this didn't have to happen, it was a buearacratic thing.
I am in the 760 area of CA.. which covers a large area. However, the population of the 760 area isn’t nearly as congested as the population of the entire Los Angeles area. L.A. is still on 10 digit dialing, My brother is in Orange, 10 digits. 760 has 11 digit dialing. They didn’t even give us the practice here of having 10 digit dialing first... just jumped right in there with 11. Its a conspiracy I tell ya!! Trying to keep the octagenarians off the phone, because they can’t remember to dial locally like they are dialing long distance.
and even tho i didn’t read all the posts all the way thru... I remember our first phone number being 5 digits, and you only had to dial the last 4 as all the numbers in town began with 8. Then came 7 digits... ours was FRontier x-xxxx... Frontier became just plain 37X=XXXX, then we got a new prefix in town.. and everyone north of a section got the new prefix.
And when area codes came in... Most of So Cal was 714... then it split and this area became 619, and it split again.. to 760. and my mother has had the same phone number for nearly 40 years.
There is probably more people in the DFW metroplex then there are in the entire 760 area.
11 digit dialing makes absolutely no sense.
Wow, I work in Brentwood, one block from Santa Monica. Not a word about the new dialing.
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