New Era Creates Numbers Crunch

Technology Causes Area Codes To Fill Up

March 03, 1997|By Jon Van, Tribune Staff Writer.

When it comes to area codes, the numbers just don't add up.

The Chicago area's six area codes provide more than 40 million workable phone numbers for a region with fewer than 7 million people, which works out roughly to six different phone numbers for everyone.

It seems like plenty, even in this day and age of people with a number for their regular phone, another for their computer and yet another for their cellular phone.

Even so, a local phone industry group warns that some suburbs will run out of numbers next year.

Why the disconnect? The easy answer is that the technology-crazed Information Age now drowning us in data is to blame, and there's much truth in that.

Every new phone line for a fax machine, an Internet connection or a dedicated data link between the corner grocery and the credit card approval agency requires a new phone number. The wireless revolution with phones carried in the pocket and pagers worn on the belt also eats up new numbers lickety-split.

But society's info-glut addiction to new gadgets doesn't require six phone numbers for every man, woman and child in the region. At least not yet.

The fact is that phone numbers are wasted on a wholesale basis. It isn't anyone's fault; it's just the byproduct of a phone system designed for a monopoly that must now adapt to rampant competition.

"Competition is now the most important driver for more phone numbers, especially in the Chicago area, which is leading the way introducing competition," said James Deak, a manager for the North American Numbering Plan Administration, which supervises phone number use nationally.

In the 847 area code that serves Chicago's northern and northwestern suburbs, seven carriers were eligible for numbers last year when the new area code was carved out of the 708 area. Now there are 29 carriers obtaining numbers in the 847 area, in which more than 70 percent of the available numbers have been assigned; analysts say they could all be gone by early next year.

The new 630 code serving the far western suburbs has had a similar experience and could exhaust its number supply by 1999.

Federal regulations require that any company certified to be in the telecommunications business in Illinois must be given blocs of local phone numbers. Numbers are doled out in parcels of about 10,000; each bloc is associated with a particular switch in the network, Deak said.

"Once assigned, the numbers are in a way frozen for use by that carrier at that switch," he said.

Requirements of billing and administration may cause a single carrier to apply for numbers associated with various switches within one area code. That carrier also may seek numbers in several different area codes within a metropolitan region.

One reason is that these companies want a presence close enough for customers to avoid toll charges, but the upshot is that a small telecommunications company with only a few thousand customers could have 100,000 or more phone numbers locked up.

The problem is national in scope. In three years, the nation has gone from 144 area codes--when the Chicago region had three--to a total of 190 area codes assigned nationwide today and counting, with six in the Chicago region.

An answer to this dilemma is something industry people call "pooling," which essentially means that instead of parceling out numbers in blocs of 10,000, the numbering authorities might recycle unused numbers.

"Maybe a small company would only need 1,000 numbers initially to accommodate customer demand," Deak said. "The other 9,000 numbers would go into a pool to be drawn out as needed for customers of whichever company had the demand."

A simple solution? Only if the commodity were playing cards or lottery tickets. But with telephone numbers that are linked to specific physical switches in the phone network, pooling entails enormous complexity, Deak said.

"We are just beginning to study the implications," Deak said. "The technology to do pooling just doesn't exist right now."

Competition already has pushed phone technology to its limit to solve another complex problem, called portability. This concerns customers who want to keep their current numbers when they change phone companies.

The Federal Communications Commission has mandated that by the end of this year, phone companies must give customers ownership of their phone numbers, so they can change local companies at will and not have to switch numbers.

Later this year, Ameritech will begin testing technology to make that happen. It requires that every switch in the network have access to databases that keep track of every customer's change of phone carriers.

"We're doing studies now to prove to ourselves we can scale this up to serve the whole system," said Roger Marshall, Ameritech technology development director. "We'll start a trial this summer and hope to roll it out for the whole system by the fall."

Phone executives across the nation are watching Ameritech's trial in number portability, Deak said.