FCC Weighs 10-Digit Dialing for All Calls

WASHINGTON —  Federal regulators are expected to consider a controversial proposal Thursday that would require telephone users to dial 10 digits for all local and long-distance calls.

The Federal Communications Commission may require the country to go to 10-digit dialing as early as next month in a sweeping effort to conserve phone numbers and slow the need for new area codes.

FCC officials contend that 10-digit dialing would create tens of millions of new local phone numbers beginning with the digit “1” or “0.” Currently, ones and zeros can’t be used at the beginning of a seven-digit local number because they signal that the caller is making a long-distance or operator-assisted call.

But outraged consumer advocates and state regulators say adopting 10-digit dialing is unnecessary and would create confusion about the distinction between a local and long-distance call.

“To me, that doesn’t make sense,” said Loretta Lynch, president of the California Public Utilities Commission. “We are far from running out of [phone] numbers.”

Lynch said she was surprised by the possible nationwide phone number mandate because the FCC has been giving state officials more power to enact conservation measures.

“It is diametrically opposed to everything the FCC has granted to California in the last 15 months,” Lynch said. “It would severely impede California’s ability to aggressively conserve phone numbers and area codes.”

At least one member of the five-member FCC thinks the 10-digit dialing proposal goes too far and suggests that other members may not be in favor of such a sweeping proposal.

The FCC has broad jurisdiction and states would have little choice but to follow any federal order to implement 10-digit dialing.

“It’s guaranteed to create an uproar,” said Natalie Billingsley, an area code expert at the Office of Ratepayer Advocates, an independent arm of California’s PUC. “What we really need to be doing is implementing practices that force phone companies to use numbers more efficiently.”

However, state officials and consumer groups can ask the FCC to reconsider the matter--and they probably will do so if the FCC proceeds with the dialing mandate.

“This opens up a can of worms about when a consumer is dialing a real long-distance call where they are charged by the minute, as opposed to a local call where they pay a flat monthly fee for unlimited usage,” said Gene Kimmelman, co-director of the Washington office of Consumers Union.

If the FCC proceeds, the loudest outcry is likely to come from California, where just a few months of 10-digit dialing in West Los Angeles in 1999 sparked a statewide public backlash against new area codes.

Since then, the PUC has effectively declared that it will not approve new area codes for the state unless the phone companies can prove that there is a shortage of phone numbers.

Last week, a California study confirmed that millions of phone numbers allocated to phone companies are not being used.

Only about half of nearly 32 million phone numbers were in use by customers in four area codes in Southern California and the Bay Area, according to the PUC study. Some 10 million possible phone numbers already assigned to phone companies were not in use by customers, and an additional 6 million numbers were still available for phone companies to request, the survey showed.

A 1998 study done for Illinois phone regulators found that of the 1.5 billion possible phone numbers created from the existing 193 area codes nationwide, about half a billion were not being used. The surplus is enough to eliminate more than 60 area codes.

Part of the problem is the inefficient way phone numbers are distributed to phone companies and other users. Until this year, phone numbers were given out in blocks of 10,000, no matter how many of those numbers were needed by customers.

Many observers thought the FCC had solved the area code crunch last spring when the agency voted to allocate new phone numbers in blocks of 1,000 instead of 10,000.

That move was taken in response to evidence that telephone carriers were stockpiling phone numbers because they suffered no penalty and feared being caught short-handed by explosive consumer demand for additional numbers for cell phones, fax machines and Internet connections.

But despite the FCC’s anti-hoarding edict, phone numbers remain in short supply in some states.

Philip McClelland, a senior assistant consumer advocate in the Pennsylvania consumer affairs office, said his state’s consumers “will not experience the benefits of pooling numbers” in smaller blocks “until 2002 or 2003.”

“We’ve found that the industry is just not able to do it that quickly,” he said. “All of this takes a good deal of administration and time.”

Other regions, including Virginia and Maryland, have implemented 10-digit dialing for local calls to stem demand for new area codes.

In addition to nationwide 10-digit dialing, the FCC’s staff recommends that the agency consider setting aside numbers exclusively for wireless phone users and other specialized services that are not tied to a geographic location.

The staff also recommends implementing anti-hoarding measures to prevent carriers from stockpiling excess phone numbers. The FCC probably would solicit further public comment before implementing any of these additional supplemental orders.

FCC Chairman William E. Kennard was traveling Tuesday and could not be reached for comment.

If the 10-digit dialing plan is adopted by the FCC, it could be difficult and costly to implement, analysts said.

Boston economist Lee Selwyn called the FCC proposal a “stopgap measure” that would require a complete overhaul of the U.S. phone system.

“The [phone] network protocol interprets the zero and one in special ways,” Selwyn said.

“It would be a fairly major network reconfiguration to go to 10-digit dialing” nationwide.

A shift to 10-digit local dialing would force expensive upgrades to everything from alarm systems, elevator emergency phones, apartment entry systems that use phone numbers, corporate phone systems and pre-programmed fax systems.

Still, the FCC’s plan has backers, especially among industry officials and others who believe that the 10-digit dialing requirement would help prepare the nation for a major shift that they view as inevitable: the move to an 11-digit or 12-digit numbering system.

“I think it’s wise to go to 10-digit dialing,” said Eric Morson, co-administrator of AreaCode-Info.com, an independent Internet site devoted to area code matters. “This is becoming more of a crisis, and they’re looking ahead at having to go to 12 digits well within the next decade.”