Most of Ventura County to Retain Its 805 Area Code

Ventura County residents and businesses can breathe easy: No need to learn a new area code--yet.

The California Public Utilities Commission, following an industry recommendation, has approved a plan that keeps most of the coastal counties of Ventura, Santa Barbara and San Luis Obispo in area code 805.

Northern Los Angeles County--including Santa Clarita, Lancaster and Palmdale--and most of Kern County will get a new area code, which will be announced next month.

Also covered by the new code will be a tiny, lightly populated strip of northeastern Ventura County and slivers of Kings, Tulare, Santa Barbara and San Luis Obispo counties.

The change will take effect in February 1999, with a six-month grace period that will allow callers to dial either the new or old code.

In Ventura County, leaders lobbied for the plan chosen by the utilities commission over one that would have split the coastal counties with a north-south line.

“That’s great news for us,” said Bob Biery, finance director with the city of Thousand Oaks. Even with a transition period, a change to a new area code would have been rough, he said.

Rudy Dominguez, a technician with Internet service provider Jet Link Systems in Ventura, said a change in area code could have had a dramatic effect on the company’s business.

“We probably would have lost a big customer base,” he said.

The new area code, which will become California’s 24th, is expected to last 14 to 17 years before it runs out of numbers, officials said. The new, smaller 805 area code is expected to last nine to 10 years.

Doug Hescox, head of the California-Nevada Code Administration, a telecommunications industry group that oversees regional telephone number distribution, said public comment favored an east-west split of the present 805 area rather than the north-south alternative.

“There were more similarities between the three coastal counties than the inland ones,” he said. “That was the pitch from the coastal communities.”

Area codes have increased to provide numbers for the proliferation of telephone-using devices, including cellular phones, pagers, computer modems and faxes.

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New Area Code

The Santa Clarita and Antelope valleys are getting a new telephone area code, effective in 1999. The California Public Utilities Commission approved a plan Wednesday putting Northern Los Angeles County and most of Kern County, including Bakersfield, into a new area code, yet to be determined. Also covered by the new code will be a tiny, lightly populated strip of northeastern Ventura County and slivers of Kings, Tulare, Santa Barbara and San Luis Obispo counties. Remaining in the 805 code will be nearly all of Ventura, Santa Barbara and San Luis Obispo counties, plus portions of Monterey, Fresno and Kings counties.

Source: California Code Administration