Phone Companies to Split the 714 Area Code in Two

Faced with a dwindling supply of phone numbers because of the region’s rapid growth, GTE and Pacific Bell officials have decided to carve a new area code out of the existing 714 zone now used by much of Orange County and the Inland Empire, officials said Monday.

But don’t throw away your business cards and stationery just yet.

Phone company officials, who will announce plans for splitting up the area code today, say they still aren’t sure just who will lose 714--and who will retain it. The only thing that seems certain is that some of the 2 to 4 million customers who now have it will eventually have to give it up.

The phone companies will be offering three proposed areas for a new area code and--as required by a new state law--will then allow their 714 customers to have a say in the final decision.

The new area code won’t take effect until January, 1993.

But the shortage of details on the new plan and its far-off deadline didn’t prevent some grumblings Monday.

Orange County Chamber of Commerce President Lucien D. Truehill predicted that there was “going to be a lot of resistance if they split this county up into different area codes. This is a dramatic change, and it’s going to be a shock to the business community.

“It’s going to require a lot of changes for business just as far as stationery and things like that. But more than that, there’s the danger of the region losing its identity when you break up the area code like that,” he said.

“Isn’t there another way it could be done?” he asked.

Officials at Pacific Bell and GTE California reply, “No, there isn’t.”

The change was forced by “the explosion of customers” in the 714 region, said GTE California spokesman Larry Cox. That explosion is a reflection of both the population boom in Orange County and the Inland Empire and the growth of high technology items such as telefax machines, inter-connected computers and cellular phones.

Orange County’s population grew 21.3% from 1980 to 1990, reaching an estimated 2.3 million people. San Bernardino and Riverside counties grew a combined 59.1% over that same decade, to 2.5 million people. The 714 area code serves nearly all of Orange County, except for Seal Beach and parts of Los Alamitos and La Habra, along with the western portions of Riverside and San Bernardino counties and several eastern cities in Los Angeles County.

“We’re just running out of phone numbers,” Cox said.

GTE and Pacific Bell, the two principal phone carriers for this region, now provide service on about 4.7 million lines, amounting to an estimated 2 to 4 million individual customers, officials said. Leaving about a 25% buffer of numbers in reserve, the companies say they have about 5 to 6 million numerical combinations available to their customers. But within the next two years, company officials said, they are in danger of surpassing that threshold.

This will be the second change in the 714 area code’s structure in a decade. Created in 1951, the 714 area code lost its San Diego area users in 1982 with the adoption of the 619 area code.

Once the phone companies put out their three proposed boundaries for possible new area code zones, public hearings are planned the week of Nov. 26 through 30. That new review process, being used for the first time in the state, was dictated by legislation sponsored by Assemblywoman Gwen Moore (D-Los Angeles) and signed into law in July.

Factors such as engineering and economics will also come into play in the final determination. “It’s not totally up to the customers; they’ll be helping us,” said Pacific Bell spokeswoman Linda Bonniksen.

The state legislation, spurred by complaints about the way that phone companies have created new area codes in the past, also prevents the companies from raising the cost of local calls that were once part of the same area code.

Even before the 714 area gets its promised realignment, callers will have to relearn some once-familiar area codes for friends and associates elsewhere around the state.

Customers on the Berkeley-Oakland side of San Francisco Bay will have to abandon their 415 code in favor of 510, starting in October, 1991. And parts of the present 213 area code--including Seal Beach and parts of Los Alamitos and La Habra in Orange County--will switch to 310 in early 1992.

The good news: the phone companies are offering three-month grace periods in each changed area, during which calls made with both the new and old digits will get through.