At the Illinois Commerce Commission headquarters in Springfield, it is referred to as “Triple X,” a now-secret code that will turn life upside down for hundreds of thousands of Chicago-area residents next year.
In New Jersey, a team of five known as “the numbering people” convene behind closed doors at a consulting firm. Their mission: To plug Triple X into an international grid known as “World Zone One” and see how it fits.
When this mystery unravels-most likely by the end of the month-all of Lake County and portions of Kane, Cook and McHenry Counties will have a new area code to replace 708.
But picking the code, as it turns out, is not as simple as drawing three Ping-Pong balls from a Lotto machine. Nor is it as random.
“A lot of people in the Chicago area think of it as a local story,” said Illinois Commerce Commission spokesman David Farrell. “It’s not. It’s a story with global impact. If you’re in Islamabad and you need to transmit by modem to Illinois, it’s a big deal.”
Each area code holds roughly 7 million numbers spread over 700 possible exchanges.
Currently, all 700 exchanges are in use in the 708 area code, thanks to the explosion of pagers, cellular phones, fax machines and modems over the past five years.
What’s more, only 748 potential codes exist-as opposed to the millions more phone numbers that will come in the next millenium.
“The arithmetic is inexorable,” said Ken Branson, a spokesman for Bellcore, a communications consulting firm in Livingston, N.J.
Triple X was chosen by Ameritech officials on March 21, a day after the ICC approved a split of the 708 area into three parts. “We’ve requested a number, but can’t divulge what it is,” Ameritech spokesman Larry Cose said.
Not even the first digit?
“What’s the point?” Cose responded.
In arriving at the magic number, a handful of Ameritech specialists followed some strict guidelines of area code selection, Cose said.
New codes cannot duplicate local telephone exchanges. Therefore, 918, a designation for Vernon Hills-area numbers, would be out (it also happens to be the area code for Tulsa). Nor can the three digits start with 0 or 1, the keystrokes for hailing an operator or starting a long distance call.
To avoid further dialing confusion, area codes should not resemble the code next to it geographically. “That’s why 212, 312 and 213 are a long way apart from each other,” Branson said of the codes that designate New York City, Chicago and Los Angeles respectively.
Created by the “Baby Bells” in 1984 to oversee North American telephone numbering, Bellcore is the place where would-be area codes meet the numbers crunch.
“It works kind of like a football draft,” said Ron Conners, director of the North American numbering plan for Bellcore. “You take a look at the codes that are available, and you reserve one.”
Conner’s codes reach out and touch about 300 million people who live in an area known as World Zone One, in phone parlance. It is composed of the United States, Canada, Bermuda and 15 Caribbean countries and contains some 1,600 local phone companies.
Before Conners unleashes Ameritech’s new area code, he and a team of specialists will pore over the phone company’s proposal. Because there are a limited number of three-digit combinations, Conners takes his work very seriously.
“We have the responsibility to make sure area codes are not squandered,” Conners said. “Whenever you change an area code, you really cause people a lot of grief. They have to change their stationery, their dialing habits.”
From the moment he sees an area code filling up, Connors runs any possible changes by a group known as the Industry Numbering Committee. To make sure the need for a new code is really there, he checks an obscure report known as the Central Office Code Utilization Survey.
Most area code changes need to be planned anywhere from two to four years in advance. In California, for example, state law requires that the public be told two years before any change, and that public meetings be held.
Once Bellcore approves the code, Conners’ task is to inform local phone companies about the proposed change and make sure their equipment is updated so customers can dial through to the new code.
That means resetting some 20,000 phone switches, not to mention some 400,000 public branch exchanges, or PBXs, used by businesses. Long distance carriers also need to be alerted to the code, Conners said.
The new area code for DuPage County and portions of Cook, Kendall, Kane and Will Counties, 630, had already been picked and approved last year. Conners said 630 was the first area code ever selected to have a middle digit higher than 1.
While that may not sound like a big deal, it is to PBX users. Until 1991, those switches were designed to only recognize area codes with 1 or 0 in the middle.
In some cases, phone systems only a year old may need completely new software. Older systems may require complete replacement at a cost of as much as $1,000 per phone line, according to industry experts. Because the equipment is not phone company property, the businesses foot the bill.
The higher middle digit was needed, Conners said, because all the other 144 possible area code combinations had been exhausted.
“We were out of new area codes for a year and a half, so it was really with these new codes that we got some relief,” Conners said.
It could be worse. In Great Britain, the whole country will go from three- to four-digit area codes beginning April 16. That idea was rejected in the United States because it would have meant a mishmash of three-and four-digit area codes.
The 630 code was originally to serve for local cellular phones and beepers, but the wireless phone industry protested it.
It had been proposed as an “overlay code,” meaning it would be randomly assigned to new numbers throughout the 708 area. That guaranteed most residents would have had to dial 11 digits even to call their next-door neighbor, and was decried by local officials from Aurora to Orland Park.
But that sigh of relief turns into groans of aggravation for the people who have to change area codes. That is because of the telephonic talismans of place and space, the ICC’s Farrell suggested.
“It’s amazing the number of calls I’ve received,” Farrell said. “People feel very strongly about their area codes. They don’t want a number that’s just floating around out there. That sense of place is very important.”
“People have emotional attachments to these things, and that’s understandable,” Branson said. “But it’s what Kurt Vonnegut called a `granfalloon,’ a proud and meaningless association.”
