Illinois regulators are still trying to dial up a winning number that will solve the Chicago region’s telephone area code conundrum.
The dwindling supply of unassigned phone numbers in the 847 area code is putting pressure on the Illinois Commerce Commission to act soon to either conserve existing numbers or somehow expand the supply–but the commissioners still can’t agree on how.
The choices facing them are unattractive.
They could simply order the 847 area, which includes Chicago’s northern and northwestern suburbs, divided in two, and customers in the new subdivision would be assigned a new area code. That would anger residents and businesses receiving their third new phone number in six years.
The commission also is considering a conservation plus overlay plan intended to loosen the squeeze on the existing number supply. This would pool unused numbers to reduce waste, plus establish a new area code, called the overlay, as a backup in case more numbers are still needed.
An overlay would pass out new numbers with a new area code to new customers in the 847 area. It would let existing customers keep their phone numbers unchanged, but carries an unpopular requirement: Once an overlay is adopted, everyone will have to dial 11 digits–area code plus number– for all local calls, even to their next-door neighbors.
The commission’s staff has endorsed the conservation plus overlay proposal, but the commissioners aren’t convinced. On Monday, they called for more arguments on the matter–their next meeting will be May 18–before making up their minds.
“I would vote right now for number conservation and an overlay code as a backup,” said Dan Miller, ICC chairman, “but some of the other commissioners are skeptical, and they want further hearings. They’re not sure that number pooling can work or if they want an overlay.”
Time is running out, and Miller said the commission knows it. The supply of unassigned phone numbers is again dwindling in the region, though it was split into three new area codes just two years ago.
When the looming number shortage in the 847 area cropped up again a year ago, representatives of competing phone companies were invited by the commission to present an industry-endorsed recommendation to meet the problem.
The industry failed to reach a consensus and dropped the problem in the commission’s lap without a recommendation.
There are more than 40 million phone numbers available to the Chicago region right now, with a population of fewer than 7 million. That works out to roughly six numbers for every man, woman and child.
Phone carriers contend that the proliferation of cellular phones, pagers, fax machines and other gadgets eats up the supply.
But the overriding reason is, ironically, a byproduct of competition in telecommunications. There are more than 30 phone companies doing business in the region, and statutes promise everyone a fair shake–that is, an equivalent amount of phone numbers to provide customers. Phone companies traditionally receive blocks of 10,000 numbers, often one block for each billing zone of every area code in which they do business.
With more than 30 phone companies doing business in the region and each drawing numbers from various area codes at 10,000 a pop, the supply of available numbers declines rapidly, even though only a small percentage of the assigned numbers are actually used by customers.
A proposal by the Citizens Utility Board, a consumer advocate group, to conserve phone numbers by pooling them has won favor from the ICC staff. Under this plan, numbers would be doled out in smaller blocks, 1,000 at a time, and they would come from unused numbers already assigned to help pare down the inventory of numbers that are available but not in use.
Pooling presents a technological challenge to the phone network, but it is something the network should be able to handle, said Seamus Glynn, associate director of CUB and pooling’s chief champion in the state.
A committee of phone companies working with CUB and Ameritech Corp. has worked out a plan to implement a test of pooling by late May or early June, Glynn said.
Carriers with blocks of 10,000 numbers that are using fewer than 100 numbers in that block would put numbers in the pool to be reassigned to ease the pressure in the 847 area, Glynn said.
If the plan works as CUB hopes, it could put off for years the need for any new area codes in the region.
Competitive telephone services already have made other demands on traditional phone technology. Earlier this month, a system of number portability in the Chicago region was activated.
Number portability enables people who now receive their phone service from Ameritech to keep their numbers when they pick another carrier for their service. Number pooling will use the same technology, Glynn said.
But even though the industry is moving ahead with a number pooling test, the notion of pooling probably would be abandoned if commissioners don’t follow their staff recommendation and mandate the practice, Glynn said.
“Without a mandate by state regulators, I fear that factions within the industry would fall back to infighting, and number pooling would die,” he said.
