City looks to break area code
By KIM CALVERT Special to the Daily Press
If the telephone companies have their way, Santa Monicans may soon have more than one area code — even when their other line is in the next room.
T-Mobile, Nextel of California, Verizon Wireless, Verizon California, Inc., Sprint, Cingular Wireless and SBC joined together last month and submitted a petition to the California Public Utilities Commission requesting that a modification be made to an earlier decision to create a new area code south of Imperial Highway, which is known as a “split.” The CPUC ruled in 2000 that a new area code could be established once the phone companies could prove that they had exhausted all of the available numbers.
As an alternative, the phone companies now want to perform what’s been called a “triggered overlay.” The overlay would allow the phone companies to issue a new 424 area code when assigning new phone numbers within the existing 310 area, which includes Santa Monica. The petition asks the CPUC to allow the phone companies to enact the overlay whenever they decide it’s necessary.
Splits and overlays are common practices by phone companies and are done when there are no longer enough phone numbers in an area code to meet consumer demand, according to the CPUC.
“It’s a sneaky, backdoor way for the phone companies to get what they want,” said City Councilman Kevin McKeown. “They don’t have to do this — either the split or the overlay. What they need to do is manage their phone numbers better.”
Public meetings will be held on the issue this week throughout cities that would be affected. McKeown said city staff members are planning to make objections to the phone companies’ petition at the California Public Utilities Commission’s meeting scheduled for Wednesday at 10 a.m. at the Malibu Council Chambers. Other public meetings will be held today in El Segundo and Redondo Beach, and on Wednesday in Culver City.
McKeown said the overlay plan would create a situation where next-door neighbors would have different area codes and a second line in the same home would have a different area code.
He said, beyond the illogic of overlap-ping area codes, there also are other inconveniences for consumers, such as the necessity to always dial 11-digit phone numbers, even when dialing from one 310 phone number to another.
“Dialing 11 numbers is going to be a big problem for seniors and children,” McKeown said, “and a big hassle and expense in terms of all the reprogramming that will be required for fax and phone machines in city government offices alone.
“We need to fight this on two fronts,” McKeown said. “We need to go before the CPUC and object to this petition and we need to do everything we can to support the passage of AB 1380.”
Assembly Bill 1380, also known as the Area Code Conservation and Consumer Protection Act of 2006, would create rules for governing telecommunications carriers that hold phone numbers in California. The goal of the bill is to prevent the premature exhaustion of an area code by forcing phone companies to allow the government to monitor their phone number inventories.
City Councilman Ken Genser said AB 1380 was one solution to both the proposed split and overlay. But he is concerned that the bill won’t pass in time to stop the phone companies’ new petition from being adopted by the CPUC.
“What we need to do is stop the petition that’s currently in front of the CPUC now — the petition that would create the overlay,” said Genser.
According to Genser, the Santa Monica community needs to express its opinion on the issue to legislators, the CPUC and to Gov. Arnold Schwarzen-egger.
The March 9 petition submitted to the CPUC by the phone companies states the overlay plan is “the best solution” for an inevitable need to create more phone numbers.
The petition claims: “The impact on consumers is minimal since, among other things, no consumer is forced to change his or her existing telephone number (i.e., no existing number is changed to a new area code, as would happen with a ‘geographic split.’”
The petition also states: “Overlays have, as a general matter, proven to be such an elegant solution to the need for area code relief that they have been implemented in over 30 metropolitan areas in the country, including New York, Chicago, Atlanta, Portland and Miami.”
Areas that would be affected by the overlay plan include Santa Monica, Malibu, Pacific Palisades, Brentwood, Beverly Hills, West Los Angeles and south to Rancho Palos Verdes.
Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on April 26, 2005. Read the original PDF.