Opposition to a Valley 818 Overlay Increases

Opposition mounted Friday to a proposed area code overlay in the 818 calling area that would allot a different area code number to all new phones in the San Fernando Valley.

Los Angeles City Councilwoman Laura Chick introduced a motion calling for the city to oppose the proposal when it goes before the state Public Utilities Commission Aug. 5.

In addition to establishing a new area code for new phone connections, the overlay would force callers in the 818 area to dial the area code for each call--even for calls within the 818 area.

Critics, including business owners and consumer advocates, contended Friday that an additional area code and 11-digit phone numbers would cause confusion, frustration and expense for commercial and residential callers.

Still, Public Utilities Commission President Richard Blias said Friday dialing longer telephone numbers is the wave of the future.

“Eventually, everyone in the country is going to have 11-digit dialing,” Blias said. “We can no longer put it off.”

He said, however, that all available telephone numbers within an area code should be depleted before an overlay or split is proposed.

There are an estimated 7.9 million phone number combinations assigned to the 818 area code that serves the Valley, which is home to 1.5 million residents.

Blias and the four other commission members are scheduled to consider the proposal at their Aug. 5 meeting in San Francisco. In addition to approving or rejecting the plan, the panel could also adopt an alternative plan to split part of the Valley into a new area code by geography.

Commissioner Carl Wood said the challenge before the commission is to balance the competing desires of telephone companies, business owners and residents.

“I am in the process of trying to sort it all out,” Wood said. “My first constituency is the residential consumer, and I am going to try to be very responsive.”

Commissioner Henry M. Duque said comments from telecommunications providers, small-business owners and residents would weigh heavily in his decision.

“A lot depends on what comments come in,” Duque said. “I will have to read those comments and see where everyone is coming from.”

Commissioners Joel Hyatt and Josiah Neeper could not be reached for comment Friday.

The idea of an area code overlay is hitting a nerve with some small-business owners in the Valley.

“From a business point of view, I’ve spent eight years or more and hundreds of thousands of dollars to let my clients know what my phone number is,” said Hank Yuloff, owner of Promotionally Minded, an Encino advertising company, and president of the Encino Chamber of Commerce. “If they lose my number, or don’t remember my number, they don’t call me.”

Holding onto the 818 area code, he said, goes beyond mere inconvenience, and to the very core of Valley identity.

“Years ago the Valley became the bastard child,” said Yuloff, referring to the Valley’s separation from the 213 area code. “So now 818 is our identity. Here we are.”

Richard Leyner, vice chairman of the United Chambers of Commerce, an umbrella organization of 23 chambers of commerce in the Valley, agreed businesses will not accept the proposed overlay without a fight.

“The general feeling is that there are more and more overlays, and more and more numbers, causing more and more problems,” Leyner said Friday. “It’s a great cost factor. Every time it changes you have to change your business cards, your stationery . . . “

The powerful Valley Industry and Commerce Assn. said the group will discuss the 818 area code overlay issue at a special meeting Friday and announce its position at a later date.

“We are looking for a solution that makes sense,” said Laurie Golden, a VICA spokeswoman. “But we don’t want to rush hastily into something and regret it later.”

Pacific Bell spokesman Steve Getzug said there are benefits to an overlay: customers get to keep their current numbers, and the overlay system avoids pitting community against community in a squabble for the original area code.

In fact, he said, an overlay extends the life of an area code, because it adds another 7.9 million numbers to the pot.

“With an overlay, you are pretty much inoculated,” Getzug said. “There will never be another change in your dialing future.”

The Los Angeles City Council is scheduled on Friday to consider Chick’s motion to oppose the overlay.

“It is getting more and more difficult to make a simple call whether it’s social or for business,” Chick said Friday. “Often I have to stop and think: ‘Are they 323, 310 or 213?’ ”

Although the practice of splitting area codes and creating overlays is new in Los Angeles--an overlay in the 310 area code as been indefinitely delayed--it has occurred in several major cities nationwide.

New York City, Chicago, Dallas, Houston, Denver, Atlanta and Miami have already made the switch to area code overlays, said Rebecca Barnhart, a spokeswoman for the North American Numbering Plan Administration in Washington, which works as a neutral third party to the telecommunications industry in assigning area codes and prefixes as well as area code relief planning.

“People have adjusted to it,” she said.

But Regina Costa, telecommunication research director for the Utility Reform Network, a San Francisco-based consumer rights group, doesn’t buy that argument.

“Any changes in the area code causes a lot of problems,” she said. “With an overlay there are even more problems where people have more numbers to dial, more than one area code in one house and more difficulty problems figuring out where they are calling.

“We are in an artificial vise created by the telecommunications industry,” she said, “and it’s not nice being a customer in that situation.”