Phone Firms to Start 909 Area Code Next Year

SAN BERNARDINO —  The swelling Inland Empire and some parts of eastern Los Angeles County will be assigned a new area code--909--in November, 1992, to help deal with the dwindling supply of telephone numbers in the 714 zone, telephone company officials announced Wednesday.

All parts of Orange County now in the 714 area will remain there. A small portion of the county is in the 213 zone.

Citing cost, convenience and public opinion, GTE California, Pacific Bell and Contel officials decided to carve the new area code zone essentially along county boundaries. They rejected two proposals that would have split Orange County and assigned 909 to the southern half, or sprinkled 909 numbers among the old 714 ones.

Two of every five people who now have a 714 area code will switch to 909 on Nov. 14, 1992. The new area code will serve about 1.8 million numbers in the western and central portions of Riverside and San Bernardino counties, along with Claremont, Pomona, Diamond Bar, San Dimas, La Verne and Walnut in eastern Los Angeles County.

Officials from the three companies have said the switch will not affect rates.

The approved boundaries drew positive reviews from phone users and civic leaders throughout the region, even among those who will have to live with the change.

“This was a logical plan and people accepted it,” said Art Wick, president of the Greater Riverside Chambers of Commerce. “You usually hear people making all sorts of noises about a decision like this, but not this time--I wish everything were this easy.”

The phone companies were forced to look for a new way of serving customers in Orange County and the Inland Empire because a boom in population, along with fax machines, cellular phones, pagers and other modern technology, meant they were running out of phone numbers.

Even with the switch, phone officials predict that the 714 and 909 zones will each tap their numerical wells dry again early in the next century--in Orange County by 2004 and in the Inland Empire by 2017.

“If California continues to grow the way it is,” warned Pacific Bell spokeswoman Linda Bonniksen, “area codes are going to split again and again and again until we come up with a whole new system.”

The Inland Empire will be the third region in California to get a new area code in the next two years. Parts of the San Francisco Bay Area will split from 415 to 510 in September, and parts of Los Angeles will split from 213 to 310 in November.

Phone company officials said an answer to the short supply of phone numbers may come with technology.

Right now, only ‘0’ and ‘1’ are used nationwide as the second digit in area codes in order to allow the phone system to recognize that a long distance call is being made. But phone company officials said that within the next few years, technological improvements will remove the limits on which numbers can be used for area codes.

If any three-digit number could serve as an area code, more zones could be created and there would be less need to switch to accommodate growth, officials said.

Establishing the 909 area code will cost about $14 million in transition costs for call-routing equipment, directory changes, and employee training--or about $200,000 more than either of the other plans that had been considered, said Terry Holte, Pacific Bell’s senior engineer.

Users will have a nine-month transition period to use either area code.

AREA CODES, PRESENT AND FUTURE

Under the approved plan, all of Orange County now in the 714 area code will keep that number. Virtually all of the rest of the 714 region--in eastern Los Angeles County and western Riverside and San Bernardino counties--would get a new 909 code in January, 1993.

* This area will be served by area code 310 in November, 1991.