Battle Lines Are Being Drawn in Area Code Split

Officials in nine cities are looking for ways to fight a telephone company plan that would split the cities in two, giving some--but not all--of their residents a new area code in 1992.

The result, they say, would be confusion that could clog emergency phone lines, damage businesses and sacrifice city unity for easy profits.

In Bell Gardens, for example, the current 213 and new 310 area codes would bisect the business district, forcing one bank to dial long-distance to reach its biggest customer across the street.

In Beverly Hills, homes on three streets would not be linked with their own prestigious community by area code, but with downtown Los Angeles, around which the new U-shaped 310 code wraps.

In Culver City, 12 addresses would be reached by dialing 213, while the rest of the city would be assigned to 310.

“The thing that angers us most is that nobody ever talked to us about this,” said West Hollywood Mayor Abbe Land, whose city would be split almost in half along La Cienega Boulevard. “The phone company made a decision and said, ‘Live with it.’ ”

“I don’t care which area code we get, we just want one,” she added.

When announcing the plan last month, representatives from GTE California and Pacific Bell said the companies had no choice but to create two area codes out of the old 213 zone because they were running out of phone numbers.

They said their engineers had examined 20 options to find a plan under which very few cities would be divided by codes when the 310 area is formed in two years. The splitting of cities “was unavoidable . . . because telephone exchanges and city limits are not related,” the companies maintained in a press release.

They emphasized that dialing an extra four digits to reach a neighbor might be an inconvenience but would carry no extra cost. And customers would keep their old seven-digit numbers.

But officials from South Gate to Inglewood to West Hollywood have fielded dozens of calls from residents and businesses about the phone companies’ failure to shape the new 310 area code to match city borders.

Despite the phone companies’ insistence that such a match is nearly impossible technically--and would be very costly if feasible--officials from most divided cities remain critical of the plan.

Some have demanded to know the precise cost of putting their cities into a single area code. (GTE now estimates the average cost at $1,854 per individual phone line.) Others have questioned the phone companies’ statements of good intentions.

“What they did was take the (path) that was most cost-effective for them,” Bell Gardens City Manager Claude Booker said. “I think they did one study--how to maximize profits.”

In Bell Gardens, as in neighboring Commerce, the phone companies followed their own franchise lines, rather than forge new borders that would match the political boundaries of the two cities, the phone companies confirmed.

Booker said he has contacted all other divided cities--including neighboring Commerce, South Gate and Lynwood--in an effort to build a united front against the plan at the Public Utilities Commission, in the Legislature and possibly in court. The utilities commission has no authority to veto the plan, but Booker said appealing to the commission could generate pressure against splitting cities.

The Bell Gardens City Council declared its opposition to the split on Monday, saying in a resolution that the change “appears to be self-serving for two monopolies at the expense of our citizens.”

Louis Shepard, city administrator of Commerce, agreed. “They’re ignoring anything other than their own convenience,” he said of the phone companies.

Interest in a coalition is also apparently building on the Westside and in the South Bay.

“I’ve spoken with council members from Inglewood and Beverly Hills, and they’re angry too,” said Land of West Hollywood, who maintains that a legal challenge to the plan is her city’s final option.

Culver City Mayor Joselle Smith said she thinks “there will be a cooperative response by all the cities affected.”

In Inglewood, Councilman Daniel Tabor’s home would be in a different area code than his City Hall office.

“It’s irritating, it’s inconvenient and it’s confusing,” he said of the plan. “For example, I’ve got calls from people who want to know how they’d call the police in another area code.”

Phone company officials say that citizens would still call 911 for emergency police and fire service in both area codes. But city officials say they are concerned that residents making non-emergency calls may clog the 911 line to avoid a long-distance call to police.

“We believe they will dial 911 because they can dial it quickly,” Booker said. “You and I know it always registers extra money when you dial long-distance. And (residents) are going to continue to think that.”

Hawthorne City Manager Kenneth Jue said, in fact, that a survey of calls to the regional emergency dispatch center used by his city shows that residents do not take quickly to change: About half still use an old emergency number instead of 911, which has been in effect about five years, he said.

“People just don’t change habits very easily,” Jue said.

City officials also say that local businesses--especially those such as restaurants and retail shops, which rely heavily on customer whim--are concerned that customers may not search two area codes to find telephone numbers, opting instead for a competitor in the same city with the same area code.

The phone companies say such concerns are common when new codes are established, but that the problems have never developed.

Seven cities or communities were split in 1984, when the 818 area code was implemented in the San Fernando and San Gabriel valleys. The greatest concern was in South Pasadena and Monterey Park, because significant parts of each were in different codes, Pacific Bell spokeswoman Lissa Zanville said.

“But we haven’t heard anything from them since that time,” she said.

City and business representatives in Monterey Park said fears of problems from the split proved unfounded.

“I do not recall any kind of increase in our 911 traffic” because of the change, said Georgette Hudson, supervisor of the city’s emergency dispatch center.

Valerie Olson, manager of the Chamber of Commerce, said business did not suffer. “There was adjustment on the part of the people, but there really were no problems whatsoever,” she said.

A campaign against the 310 boundaries reached the Legislature in early January, just two weeks after the phone companies announced their plan.

State Sen. Herschel Rosenthal, whose district includes Beverly Hills and Culver City, said the effect on business is one of the reasons that he has authored a bill intended to make phone companies more accountable when drafting new area codes.

Rosenthal’s bill, which unanimously passed the Senate on Thursday, would require public notice from phone companies before they implement new codes. It would also force the companies to consider a set of criteria--including geographical features, common interests and the cohesiveness of communities--before dividing cities into two area codes.

Several cities have backed the bill, although some officials said they favored an outright prohibition on city splitting, as was proposed early this month by Assemblywoman Gwen Moore (D-Los Angeles). Moore withdrew her bill last week for lack of support.

According to the phone companies, Rosenthal’s measure is unnecessary. The companies say they have given affected cities and the public more than two years’ notice of the new 310 zone and are arranging detailed presentations to the cities.

Dominic Gomez, area vice president for Pacific Bell, said his company considered all the factors listed in Rosenthal’s measure and more when deciding how to split the 213 zone. The franchise areas of the two phone companies were a lesser consideration, he said. Two of the nine cities--Bell Gardens and Commerce--are split along franchise lines.

The U-shaped 310 area, which borders downtown Los Angeles on three sides, made sense, Gomez said, because it kept within the 213 zone the communities most closely associated with the downtown area, such as Hollywood.

A key technical consideration, he said, is that phone lines are connected to specific exchanges, or main offices. It is extremely difficult and expensive to route an existing line into a different exchange, said Gomez, adding that the 310 zone represents a “sound, sincere business decision that impacted the least amount of people possible.”

A small sampling of customers showed that some are more concerned than others about the 310 split.

The manager of the Bell Gardens bank that will be in a different area code from its principal customer said his business should be affected very little.

“From a banking standpoint it might become an irritation, but that’s called change,” said manager James Lyle. “We’re usually not an impulse call.”

BACKGROUND Last month, GTE California and Pacific Bell announced that the 213 area code in parts of Los Angeles County would be divided in two, with the creation of a new 310 area code that forms a horseshoe shape around downtown Los Angeles. Under the change, effective in 1992, nine cities will be split in two, with each city partly in the 213 area and partly in the 310 area. The cities that would be split are Bell Gardens, Beverly Hills, Commerce, Culver City, Inglewood, Hawthorne, Lynwood, South Gate and West Hollywood.

NEW AREA CODE BOUNDARIES Rough boundaries for 213 area code and the new 310 area code, as determined by GTE California and Pacific Bell, are based on existing telephone number prefixes rather than geographic lines. The change is to take effect at 12:01 a.m. Saturday, Feb. 1, 1992, after which there will be three-month period when callers can use either area code. Customers in the 818 area code will be unaffected.