Not a 3rd Area Code, Audience Pleads in Phone-Traffic Forum

Residents, small-business owners and city officials told the state Public Utilities Commission on Tuesday that giving Orange County another area code would create undue difficulties.

Adding a new code to the county, which was already split this year with the addition of a second area code, is one of a number of proposals before the state agency for easing continued phone traffic crowding here.

About 50 county residents filled the Anaheim Public Library in the first public hearings over the plans. Three more hearings are scheduled in September.

The PUC, which will decide what to do next year, has to find a way to keep up with the proliferation of cellular telephones, pagers, computer modems and other communications products and services that are wiping out available numbers in each area code.

In approving the new 949 area code, which is now going into effect, the agency had promised that a third area code wouldn’t be needed for several more years. Now the agency acknowledges that a new code would solve the current problems.

But the idea of splitting up communities--as Costa Mesa is now with 714 and 949--drew the most ardent opposition.

Splitting cities by area code creates a “tremendous burden,” said Michael Dolder, Huntington Beach fire chief and acting assistant city administrator. “You create chaos in communities. You are hamstringing us for the convenience of new telephone providers.”

He said that having more than one code within a city could also affect response to 911 emergency calls. Dispatchers, he said, would have more trouble keeping track of 10-digit telephone numbers.

Jack Brooks, 53, of Huntington Beach, said new codes would discriminate against small-business owners like himself. Customers who know him by word of mouth would have a harder time finding him with a new code, he said.

“The people here first should have a right to keep the numbers we have,” he said.

Dolder and others urged that a new area code be created for pager and cell phone users, but the Federal Communications Commission determined that such a division would discriminate against new long-distance providers, said PUC spokeswoman Kyle DeVine.

The big increase in area codes began in 1994, and California now has 21 of them, DeVine said.

Phone companies are given numbers in blocks of 10,000, each under one prefix, and each block is reserved even if a company is using only a fraction of the numbers in it.

The commission is studying ways that telephone companies can pool numbers, making fewer of them go unused, DeVine said.

*

She also pointed out that it isn’t always feasible for cities to remain within one area code.

Costa Mesa, for example, is split because two telephone central offices are based there. To have one code, Costa Mesa would have to approve construction of a new central office, dig up old wires and install new wires, she said.

“Who’s going to pay for this?” DeVine asked.

Several officials complained about the format of the meeting, in which city officials took turns complaining about how the new codes would directly affect their respective cities.

“It’s pathetic to throw us in a room and do this,” said Kevin Justin of Cypress.

Yet choosing among the competing plans is an inevitable, if painful, exercise, DeVine said. “We don’t like to see this happen,” she said. “But for now there’s not another solution.”