ORANGE COUNTY PERSPECTIVE : And Now, Area Code Phobia?

BUtterfield 8. PEnnsylvania 6-5000. Telephone exchanges famous in popular culture. In Orange County we once had favorite exchanges: VIking, LExington and ORiole. Those were days when a telephone number had character, even romance.

Southern Californians are long past their nostalgia over prefixes, which were discontinued in the early 1960s. But they still seem to get upset at the prospect of changing area codes. In 1992, Los Angeles will be divided between the 213 area and a new code, 310. The following year, the 714 area code that services Orange, Los Angeles, Riverside and San Bernardino counties will be split up. If done well, that division will be geographical, leaving Orange County with 714 and assigning the fast-growing Inland Empire with the new 909 code.

Telephone code service areas are getting so compact that it may seem as if every person will have his or her own 10-digit phone number eventually. That notion may be far-fetched, but consider that cellular phones already carry their assigned area codes across existing boundaries. Telephone company engineers say it’s possible that some day everyone will be assigned a telephone number for life, somewhat like a Social Security number.

In the meantime, wrenching people from their telephone numbers still seems to cause an identity crisis. Thirty years ago, when the telephone company decided to bury telephone prefix names in Los Angeles, there was a similar fuss. Some people were afraid they’d never be able to remember “all those numbers.” Well, they can be proud. Today those who can’t remember can program their fast-dial phones to do it for them. Now our telephone nightmares revolve around such traumas as having our fax machines break down. Getting used to three new digits seems minor by comparison.

Still, today’s fast-paced technological revolution in phone communications can’t compare to those phone noir days, when prefixes had personality, and dial tones were really dial tones . . . .