Bellcore Says Its Number Is Up on Allocation : Communications: The Baby Bell firm’s decision to abandon area code and other services offers glimpse into behind-the-scenes rivalry.

First the country started running out of area codes. Now the outfit that allocates them is giving up the job.

Stung by criticism from competitors, the regional Bell operating companies said Tuesday that they will relinquish control over the allocation of numbers, including area codes, five-digit long-distance carrier identification codes, some local phone numbers and codes for toll-free and 900-prefix information services.

Bellcore, the Baby Bells’ New Jersey-based research arm, will phase out oversight of number allocation over the next 12 to 18 months in order to give the industry time to find a replacement.

Bellcore’s president, George H. Heilmeier, said in a letter to the Federal Communications Commission that Bellcore “has been a responsible and impartial caretaker of the numbering resources it has administered,” but it is abandoning that role in response to what he termed unfounded complaints from rivals that Bellcore “might discriminate in favor of its owners” in the distribution of new phone numbers.

Bellcore’s about-face gives a rare public glimpse into the fierce behind-the-scenes battles over who will control one of the communications industry’s most critical and powerful functions: the allocation of telephone numbers. The winner will play a central role in determining the rate at which rapidly emerging new technologies can be accommodated.

The numbering transition comes as federal regulators are preparing to authorize next month the first of a host of eagerly awaited new communications services, which have the potential to absorb millions of additional phone numbers and area codes.

Any successor to Bellcore must also grapple with a looming phone number gridlock that threatens to retard business growth. The information age has fueled such an explosion of fax machines, cellular phones and other high-tech communications gadgets that the supply of three-digit North American area codes--all of which have “0” or “1” in the middle--will be exhausted within two years.

“It will be a big challenge taking (Bellcore’s) years and years of expertise and transferring it to someone else in 18 months,” said Richard Nespola, president of a Leewood, Kan., telephone consulting firm called Management Network Group Inc.

Bellcore’s announcement follows a surprise FCC decision earlier this month to halt the company’s planned assignment of 500 service-access codes to personal communications services, or PCS--a new wireless technology that is expected to produce communications devices as portable and unobtrusive as a wristwatch.

In barring Bellcore’s allocation of PCS codes, the FCC cited industry concern that several of Bellcore’s owners, including units of Bell Atlantic and Pacific Telesis, were among those vying for the new codes.

Bellcore has long battled criticism that it is neither fast enough nor fair enough in meeting the demand for phone numbers. Some cellular phone subscribers are reporting delays in obtaining service as the growing industry gobbles up 7,500 new phone numbers a day.

“The time is way overdue to get the fox out of the chicken coop,” said Andy Lipman, senior vice president with Metropolitan Fiber Systems, an Oakbrook, Ill.-based alternative provider of local phone service. “The current arrangement is an artifact of the pre-divestiture telephone system. It’s wholly inappropriate for (Bellcore) to be in charge of administering telephone numbers. It’s like giving Ford Motor Co. the authority to allocate license plates.”

But industry officials and federal regulators may be hard-pressed to come up with a suitable candidate to quickly learn the complex task of administering telephone numbers--a task performed by Bellcore since the court-ordered breakup of American Telephone & Telegraph in 1984.

“It’s a very esoteric business, and it takes a while to learn,” said Ron Conners, Bellcore’s director of the North American Numbering Plan.

He said that while a few companies are qualified, the industry may not be prepared to pay higher prices for a service Bellcore had been performing essentially for free.

Already, Metropolitan Fiber Systems and Teleport Communications Group, both upstart telecommunications companies in New York that compete with local phone providers, have filed challenges with the New York State Public Services Commission over the way New York Telephone assigns them local phone numbers allocated by Bellcore. And they are balking at New York Telephone’s fees.

“We pay $1,800 a month per block of (10,000) phone numbers,” said Teleport spokesman Bernie Walker.