New Area Code’s a Wrong Number for Some Security Systems

Apartment building and condominium owners and residents from Redondo Beach to Malibu and from Gardena to Beverly Hills are learning a hard and costly lesson about area code overlays.

Throughout the 310 area code territory, building security and dial-up telephone entry systems inexplicably stopped working, leaving visitors and delivery workers stranded outside. Building owners and managers were deluged with frantic calls.

“We couldn’t figure out what was wrong, the equipment just wasn’t dialing,” said Philip C. Gould, president of a 27-unit condominium association in Westwood. “It hit a lot of people.”

The culprit: the addition of a second area code in the 310 region using the “overlay” method.

The state-approved plan that went into effect April 17 calls for two area codes to serve the same geographic territory and requires callers in the region to dial 1 and the area code and the number.

The four extra digits, however, tripped up many building security and entry systems that are programmed to handle seven-digit phone numbers. Such dial-up systems typically allow visitors to key in a resident’s code (often two or three digits), triggering the system to dial the resident’s pre-programmed phone number.

“It wipes out both the security systems and the entry systems, so the impact is quite pronounced,” said Harold Greenberg, president of the Apartment Assn. of Greater Los Angeles, which serves building owners and managers covering 300,000 units. “Everybody got caught flat-footed on this, and they’re frantic.”

There are an estimated 13,562 apartment and condominium buildings in the 310 overlay region, representing about 187,000 units, according to figures from Marcus & Millichap, a Palo Alto-based real estate brokerage.

Greenberg estimated that up to 70% of the buildings have systems old enough to need a major upgrade.

Newer dial-up entry systems can be fixed by upgrading the circuit board inside and reprogramming all the phone numbers, according to Bill Lamb, owner of Lamb Security Systems in South El Monte. New boards cost from $475 to $575 each, Lamb said, and the total cost depends on the amount of phone-number reprogramming.

Systems 3 years or older, however, may not be upgradeable, which means building owners would have to replace the equipment. Replacement costs range from $1,400 to $3,000, Lamb said.

Complicating the situation, many suppliers have been flooded with orders, and it can take several days or weeks for buildings to fix the problem. And until the problems are fixed, the systems won’t work.

Harris Properties, a Culver City firm that manages apartment and condominium buildings, started upgrading entry equipment in January and spent $15,000 to $20,000 to outfit 30 buildings before 11-digit dialing began, according to Lionel Harris, president of the firm.

Once the new dialing system took effect, Harris said, one of the precious new computer boards was stolen. Harris, who said the board was probably taken by a vendor who was short on supplies, had to re-secure all the equipment to prevent further thefts.

Gould said his building in Westwood, populated primarily by older residents, went without its entry system for about a week--raising concerns about emergency access, among other things.

“We were quoted a price of $2,100 for the new equipment,” Gould said, “and we had to go for it because we couldn’t go out to bid and put people’s lives in danger” with the delay.

State and federal regulators have long touted area code overlays as a method that is cheaper for the public than a traditional geographic split.

In a geographic split, a new area code is assigned. That can result in changes to stationery, business cards and potentially lost business if customers don’t know about the new phone number.

But the entry-system problem shows that the overlay method has its costs as well.

Residents and businesses in the 310 region, for example, also have had to pay to have their alarm systems reprogrammed or upgraded. In addition, some elevator emergency phones are not programmed to handle 11-digit dialing, and it can cost about $150 per elevator to fix the problem.

Meanwhile, dialing 11 digits on every call--even those within the same area code--is continuing to stir rancor within 310.

The region’s second area code, 424, is scheduled to begin being issued on July 17. But some legislators and others are urging the state to delay the introduction of 424 so other number conservation efforts can be tried.

For now, however, building owners and others in 310 have no choice but to pay for upgrades or replace dial-up systems.

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Elizabeth Douglass can be reached at elizabeth.douglass@latimes.com.