By Michael Jondreau Santa Monica
I could hear them breathing out there, waiting for the right moment, waiting long enough for us to forget what was already explained to us: That the inconvenience for us of dialing an area code now for all calls is, in fact, a convenience for the phone companies.
Way back when, Robert Scheer in a series of LA Times articles, revealed that overlays such as we have now are not based on the lack of numbers, as the phone companies claim. Despite faxes, cell phones, pagers and so on, at that time only 35 million of California’s 180 million available numbers were in use, Scheer told us.
A call I placed to the office of a local representative in the intervening years begat the information that the phone companies, reduced from buying numbers in packets of 10,000 to purchases of 1,000 at a time, seeking for their convenience, certain sequences so that they can better control number assignments in new residential complexes.
The reductions reflect the outcry that we 310ers set up during the last overlay threat. But I could hear them breathing. Even as the original purpose of area codes — to bypass the operator for long-distance calls — was being rapidly eroded elsewhere, and the breathing got louder.
I could hear them breathing, awaiting that right moment, even as I can hear the breathing that awaits the right moment when all our struggle is forgotten, and perhaps fatigue, and LA will get its NFL team, like it or not.
Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on August 11, 2006. Read the original PDF.