Burbank, Glendale Win Fight to Stay in 818 Area Code

In what local officials called “an amazing victory,” the state Public Utilities Commission on Tuesday surprisingly voted to exempt Burbank, Glendale, La Crescenta and La Canada Flintridge from a new 626 telephone area code, allowing them to stay in the 818 area code.

The PUC’s ruling means that 2.7 million current phone numbers will stay in the 818 area code, while 1.4 million phones will shift into the new 626 area code.

The new area code, which will begin operation in June, will start in Pasadena and encompass the San Gabriel Valley and points east.

The PUC voted 4 to 0 in favor of the Burbank-Glendale proposal to redraw the geographic split so that their communities could stay in the 818 area code with the rest of the San Fernando Valley.

“Burbank and Glendale both explained convincingly that their ties with the San Fernando Valley are much greater than with the San Gabriel Valley,” said Kyle DeVine, a PUC spokesperson.

The decision capped a heavy week of lobbying by Burbank Mayor Bill Wiggins and Glendale City Councilwoman Mary Ann Plumley, who made numerous trips to plead their case with all five PUC commissioners. In the past week alone, Wiggins made three trips to San Francisco to meet with PUC officials.

“I’m just thrilled. All the commissioners were opened-minded and they listened to our city’s concerns,” Wiggins said.

Burbank City Manager Robert R. Ovrom said he was happily shocked by the turnaround and credited Wiggins and others for their intensive lobbying.

“We’re just ecstatic. We thought that was a losing cause,” Ovrom said. “That’s just an amazing victory.

At the same time, the PUC rejected Monterey Park’s request to allow the San Gabriel Valley to keep 818 and impose the 626 area code in the San Fernando Valley.

Among other things, Monterey Park officials argued that its large Chinese American community consider the number eight to be represent good fortune, while the numbers 626 are unlucky.

Coping with a flurry of new area codes has become a way of life in the past decade for businesses and consumers across the country because of a surge in phone numbers due to the boom in fax machines, cellular phones, computers and pagers that have overloaded the telecommunications industry.

Pacific Bell has said that the 818 area code would run out of new phone numbers by 1998. So about a year ago, a telecommunications industry group recommended an almost even geographic split of the 818 area code, with the 626 area code to be imposed along the western edge of Burbank.

Earlier this month, Administrative Law Judge Philip Weismehl ruled in support of the proposal. Industry officials expected the PUC to go along with the judge’s ruling.

But on Monday, after Burbank and Glendale officials wrapped up their lobbying campaign, Weismehl redrafted his decision, and the PUC officially went along with it, DeVine said.

Wiggins and Plumley had told PUC members that there is a natural geographic separation of Burbank and Glendale from Pasadena and the San Gabriel Valley.

They also talked about the lagging economy in the the San Fernando Valley and of local businesses that would have to bear the cost of ordering new stationary and advertising and the technological costs of converting phone lines.

Smaller firms typically face several thousand dollars in costs when an area code changes. “It would have been even more devastating for smaller businesses who are working on tighter budgets,” Plumley said.

“The Valley is just getting back on its feet. The economy is being fueled by the media industry, and we’re not just talking about Warner Bros., Disney, NBC and MCA, but also secondary post-production firms. That’s what is driving the economy in the San Fernando Valley,” Wiggins said.

Walt Disney and NBC have more than 30,000 phone lines that they would have had to switch to the 626 area code, Wiggins said.

“All area code splits are bad,” said Linda Bonniksen, a Pacific Bell spokesperson. “And more power to Glendale and Burbank. But it’s probably not much comfort to Monterey Park or other customers in the San Gabriel Valley.”

Tuesday’s decision caught many by surprise, including Pacific Bell, who is in charge of administering the new area code.

“Pacific Bell is generally used to winning cases like this,” said attorney Helen Mickiewicz, with the PUC’s Division of Ratepayer Advocates. “In this case, they kind of got outgunned. Pac Bell did not know how serious Burbank and Glendale were” in personally lobbying the utility commissioners.

Most residential customers who fall into the 626 area code won’t be charged for the switch.

Businesses, though, will have to bear some of the cost. And for companies with larger, in-house telephone switching systems, they will also need to add new computer software.

By adopting this more lopsided geographic split, the life span of the smaller 818 area code will dramatically shorten, Pacific Bell says. The 818 area code will last from three to five years before another split is needed, compared with 12 to 43 years for the 626 area code.

But Norman Pedersen, an attorney for the cities of Burbank and Glendale, said that by the next decade all the technical glitches will have been worked out so that a new method of “overlay” area codes could be introduced instead of needing another geographic split.

Pacific Bell was in the awkward position of defending the proposed 818/626 area code split before the PUC, even though the company favored the “‘overlay” method, where a new area code is added on top of an existing area code, so that old phone numbers stay the same while only new phones take on a new area code.

But companies who want to compete in the deregulated local phone business argue this is an unfair advantage for Pacific Bell because most of its customers could keep their old numbers.

The Federal Communications Commission has set a December 1997 deadline for Los Angeles-area phone companies to put into service a more sophisticated technology called permanent number portability, which would allow customers to switch local phone companies without having to change phone numbers.

In 1947, the first three area codes were introduced in California. The 818 area code was created in 1984 to take some pressure off the growth in the 213 area code. California now has 13 area codes, but that will jump to 26 in the next five years.

All told, Burbank spent about $70,000 in legal expenses to fight its case, Wiggins said, and Glendale spent another $10,000.

“I’d say the taxpayers got their money’s worth,” Wiggins said.

Times staff writer Efrain Hernandez Jr. contributed to this story.

* RATE RELIEF: New FCC rules could mean savings on overseas calls. A8

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Dividing by Numbers

The Public Utilities Commission voted Tuesday to redraw the new 626 area code split so that Burbank, Glendale, La Crescenta and La Canada Flintridge would remain in the 818 area code. Here are some of the communities the proposed code would serve.

818

San Fernando

Northridge

Sunland-Tujunga

La Crescenta

Glendale

North Hollywood

Sherman Oaks

Canoga Park

Calabasas

Agoura

****

626

Mt. Wilson

Pasadena

Monrovia

Covina

Alhambra

Monterey Park