North and northwest suburban phone customers won two extra months of dialing reprieve Wednesday as the start date for the new area code “overlay” in the 847 region was pushed back to Jan. 23.
With thousands of unassigned numbers being turned back to Ameritech, which distributes them to carriers in 847, nearly three dozen companies that do business in the region agreed at a Chicago meeting that they had enough to last past the original Nov. 7 date.
That doesn’t mean phone companies have abandoned their argument that 847 remains in a number crisis, despite estimates showing that only about half of all possible phone numbers in 847 actually are in use.
Wireless carriers agreed to the later date if they can get their hands on the new 224 overlay numbers starting in November. Those carriers want to be able to activate the numbers by Jan. 23 and need time to program routers and switches.
“We wanted to make sure there would be enough numbers for our customers,” said Oriano Pagnucci, spokesman for AT&T Wireless, which controls roughly 50,000 numbers in 847. “We don’t want to run out of numbers, particularly at Christmastime and the holidays, when people want to buy phones for their loved ones.”
Industry leaders also decided to lift the current 847 rationing plan, under which no more than five blocks of 10,000 numbers can be distributed to phone companies in any given month.
Meanwhile, the Illinois Commerce Commission and the Citizens Utility Board watchdog group are analyzing data from those same phone companies to determine just how many numbers are being wasted or could be turned back into a pool for redistribution. The results from those surveys, the first of which is to be presented to commissioners Tuesday, will be used by the board to decide whether an overlay can be put off.
“They’re trying to have it both ways,” said Seamus Glynn, associate director of CUB. “They want the public to think they’re running out of blocks of numbers, and they want the Commission to think that as well, but then they themselves don’t take any steps to indicate there’s a fear of number exhaust.”
