North and northwest suburbanites can let their fingers do the resting now that the Illinois Commerce Commission has blocked a phone industry plan to activate a new area code in the 847 area. Because the new code, 224, would have served as an overlay instead of being confined to a specific geographical boundary, it would have required the area’s residents to dial 11 numbers for every call, even those within one area code.
The ICC’s move was welcome not just because it spares callers an unnecessary inconvenience but also because it challenges the phone companies and federal regulators to get their numbers straight.
NeuStar Inc., which administers phone numbers for the industry, claimed the 224 code was needed. Yet only half of the existing area code’s 7.7 million available numbers are in use.
Various phone companies have been assigned certain three-digit prefixes, but they haven’t given them out to customers. The Citizens Utility Board reports that Ameritech is using 72 percent of its assigned numbers. But AT&T, which hasn’t thrived in the local-phone market, has a “fill rate” of just 8 percent. According to CUB’s figures, AT&T and MCI/WorldCom (22 percent “fill rate”) currently hold 37 percent of the area’s unused wire-line (as opposed to wireless) phone numbers.
AT&T contends that such figures are inaccurate. Much to the irritation of ICC members, NeuStar admitted the phone companies had been supplying inaccurate data even as they pushed for the new area code.
The ICC’s number conservation program exists to prevent the hoarding of numbers; it requires carriers to fill one prefix before starting another and to turn back unused numbers. One sign of the program’s effectiveness: In late 1998 the companies declared that all five of the city and suburban area codes would be exhausted by February 2000. It didn’t happen. Now NeuStar predicts the 708 area code will run out of numbers by this summer, and 312 and 773 will reach capacity in a little more than a year.
Will they? The ICC last week ordered an investigation into whether carriers are holding onto prefixes that serve few or no customers.
There is some hope for a way out of the confusion. The Federal Communications Commission is said to be rethinking its rejection of a 1995 proposal to create an all-wireless area code. Some wireless carriers complained that such a move would put them at a competitive disadvantage because cell-phone and pager users would be required to dial 11 numbers. But given that wireless devices are by nature mobile, this inconvenience pales to that of creating overlay area codes. Also, the demand for new phone numbers may be abating as Internet users switch from second phone lines to DSL lines and cable modems, which don’t require a phone number.
Conserving phone numbers is especially important given that CUB projects the nation to be on pace to run out of area codes in six or seven years, which would require a phone-system reconfiguration that could cost hundreds of billions of dollars. But technology and innovation have a way of overtaking doomsday predictions, and last week’s developments were a positive step to putting the numbers mess on hold.
