On 8/22/16 8:15 PM, Bill Talanian wrote:
Plans to add a new area code to the 805 mean Paul Strauss may one day have to dial 11 digits to call someone who lives next door.
This is common in most urban areas, and 10 vs. 11 digits is an issue in some areas, a throwback to when long distance calls were fairly expensive.
Way back in the dark ages, area codes were easily detected by electromechanical equipment. The second digit was always 1 or 0, and the second digit of a prefix was never 1 or 0. Not using a 1 or 0 as the second digit of a prefix was also an artifact of exchange names such as WOodland for most of Santa Barbara numbers starting with 96. Telcos set up their equipment so that a leading 1 was used for long distance. A local call was either 7 digits or in those rare locations where a local call crossed an area code boundary, it was ten digits. A long distance call was 1 + 7 or 1 + 10.
As numbers became exhausted, exchange names went away and the second digit of a prefix was allowed to be 1 or 0. This meant that a leading 1 meant "area code follows" in most areas, and not "long distance".
Further number exhaustion led to area codes with other than 1 or 0 as the middle digit. In some locations such as Dallas TX, everyone dials ten digits for local and 1+ten digits for LD.
Split vs. overlay is a hot topic. Force everyone to dial ten digits for local calls or force half of the people in an area code to change numbers. Some people will be upset either way.
Ma Bell saw this coming in the early days of cellular and wanted wireless phones and pagers to use a different area code. This would have solved or at least substantially delayed the split vs. overlay problem. Cell companies lobbied against it and it never came to pass.
Only 40 of 792 prefixes are left and they are expected to run out by the middle of 2018. That means a change in area code is unavoidable, said Joe Cocke, of the North American Numbering Plan Administration, which administers phone numbers in 20 countries, including the United States.
NANPA is pretty much the US, Canada, and the Caribbean. Some Caribbean islands often have very high long distance rates despite "looking like" regular US numbers.
In the plan called an overlay and proposed by the telecommunications industry, people who currently use 805 would keep it. People who move to the region beginning in mid-2018 or who want to add lines could be assigned a new, still unknown area code.
It will show up here when assigned. https://www.nationalnanpa.com/enas/plannedNpasNotInServiceReport.do
A final decision from the California Public Utilities Commission, which organized Monday's hearing, is likely to come next year and be implemented before the prefixes are dialed out.
But the overlay means people would have to dial 10 digits with every phone call. On land lines, people would also have to dial a 1. The cost of the call would not be affected.
The extra dialing is a concern for some.
"The seven (digits) is bad enough," said Pat Brown, 75, of Oxnard, relating decades of telephone experience that date back to the days when operators connected local calls. "This overlay is going to be horrendous."
Brown suggested a better alternative that involves splitting off part of the 805 and assigning it a new area code.
That was done here a few years ago with 661 which used to be part of 805. Those of us used to 7-digit dialing (or 2L-5D) generally prefer splits. 805 is itself a split from 213 back in 1957.
Ten-digit dialing is routine for cellphone users, noted Jerome Candelaria, of the California Cable and Telecommunications Association.
And many cell phone users never change their phone number when they move, meaning that a SB resident may have an Atlanta phone number. https://xkcd.com/1129/
"It appears that having to change the area code is more disruptive than having to dial the digits," he said.
If he's in the half forced to change, yes. If not, then the extra digits are more disruptive.
Matt Dorros, of Simi Valley, questioned whether any change was needed. He said phone companies hoard prefixes that, if used properly, could extend the life of the current 805 indefinitely.
"I have counted an unbelievable number of ghost prefixes in the 805," he said, referring to numbers allegedly not assigned to anyone.
That's an artifact of older switching systems coupled with competitive local exchange carriers. Back in the day, a prefix of three digits was associated with a given wire center switch and all calls to that block of 10,000 numbers followed the same routing. When a competitive carrier began service in a new rate center, the minimum allocation was 10,000 numbers. Now it's cut into blocks of 1,000 numbers.
Cocke said a system of checks and balances is aimed at preventing any hoarding. He said phone and cable companies have to prove a legitimate need for new prefixes.
Waste has pretty much been solved by the allocation block of 1,000 numbers.
Here's a local example. http://www.localcallingguide.com/lca_prefix.php?npa=805&nxx=280&x=&a...
The "A" column is the default switch that will reroute calls from older systems unable to handle blocks.
And here's a prefix with unallocated blocks:
http://www.localcallingguide.com/lca_prefix.php?npa=805&nxx=203&x=&a...
He said many of the so-called ghost prefixes are likely used for machine-to-machine communication, including Wi-Fi connections, faxes, medical devices and alarm systems.
The above is completely wrong. Wi-fi doesn't use phone numbers at all. Faxes and alarm systems use conventional numbers as would any medical device that needs to make or receive phone calls. Bell and then Western Union used to have a separate network of TWX area codes a long time ago for Teletype machines of 510, 610, 710, 810, and 910. This went away in 1981.
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