Local Phone Numbers at a Premium

When AT&T; and other big-name long-distance companies retreated from the California local phone market, it seemed no one would step in to challenge the dominance of Pacific Bell and GTE in the state’s neighborhoods.

But with MediaOne’s phone service launch last week and Cox Communications’ plans to expand on its Orange County phone service success by jumping into the San Diego market soon, some residential phone customers are indeed reaping the rewards of competition.

Still, there’s a catch. If the cable guy is going to become the phone guy too, he’s going to need phone numbers--and a lot of them.

Unfortunately, the supply is so low statewide that regulators are rationing phone numbers in 16 of California’s 20 area codes. Numbers are normally distributed in multiples of 10,000. In areas where demand for numbers is high, such as in the 213, 310 and 619 codes, local service providers are limited to one block of numbers per month.

Local phone companies aren’t the only providers in need of numbers: Wireless and paging companies also compete in the lottery. In the 310 area code, for example, the three groups are vying for the six prefixes available per month.

“It’s a serious problem, and it needs to be resolved quickly,” said Barry Fraser of Utility Consumers’ Action Network, a San Diego-based consumer group. “It’s a pretty stiff impediment to competition.”

Indeed, the shortage has forced Cox to repeatedly delay the start of phone service in San Diego and nearly derailed MediaOne’s phone service launch in the Los Angeles area.

“You can’t be in the phone business if you don’t have phone numbers,” said Richard Smith, vice president for regulatory affairs for Cox.

“We’ve participated in the [619] lottery since October 1996, and it’s been a very slow process. . . . We were getting one block of numbers every third or fourth month.”

The problem is made more difficult by industry conventions that mandate that each phone number prefix be assigned to a certain geographic area. For Cox, that meant the company would need about 26 separate prefixes (with 10,000 numbers each) to cover the cable company’s service area in San Diego County.

“We probably have enough numbers to cover about 80% of our [San Diego] service area now, so we’re going to launch a couple of months from now,” Smith said.

Cox’s concerns were echoed by MediaOne, which began selling phone service April 13 in Culver City, West Los Angeles and nearby areas.

“We’ve got enough numbers to go [with service], but we’ll have to keep going back for numbers,” said Barbara Hockert, MediaOne’s vice president for telephony. “The [PUC] is going to be willing to work with us, because they want to see competition.”

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Time for a New Boast? By now, GTE Corp. will likely have collected all 11,000 of the directories that put tens of thousands of customer names, addresses and unlisted phone numbers in the hands of telemarketers.

But there’s more to do--such as issuing refunds and explaining the software snafu to state regulators. And the company may want to rush through an order for new business cards at GTE’s directory division.

Printed on the division’s business cards: “Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award--1994 winner.”

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Service Charges: State regulators have long known that some unscrupulous phone companies target poor and non-English-speaking customers, but a new survey by the Greenlining Institute hints that the problem is worse than many thought.

In a survey of 502 limited-English-speaking and minority phone customers, more than half said they had their long-distance carrier switched without their permission--a practice known as slamming, according to Robert Gnaizda, an attorney with the San Francisco-based advocacy group.

About one-third of the customers surveyed said they had been “crammed,” or charged for services they did not order, such as call-waiting, three-way calling or caller ID.

The California Public Utilities Commission has reviewed the results but has not taken a position on the survey, according to Fred Patterson, chief investigator in the PUC’s consumer services division.

The Greenlining Institute conducted the March survey in Orange, Los Angeles and Fresno counties, with help from several community organizations.