telecom@eecs.nwu.edu (TELECOM Moderator) (12/20/89)
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TELECOM Digest Thu, 21 Dec 89 01:20:12 CST Special: NPA 213 Controversy
Today's Topics: Moderator: Patrick Townson
Controversy Over Area Code 213 Split (Various writers via Michael Berch)
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Date: Wed, 20 Dec 89 13:48:33 -0800
From: "Michael C. Berch" <mcb@presto.ig.com>
Subject: Controversy Over Area Code 213 Split
Patrick,
I haven't seen anything in Telecom yet about the apparent brou-ha-ha
over the split of NPA 213 in the Los Angeles Area. There is a
discussion taking place in the newsgroup ca.general, which I presume
you don't get, so I have forwarded the articles (my 2 among them) to
you for use in Telecom.
Michael C. Berch
mcb@presto.ig.com / uunet!presto.ig.com!mcb
==========
[Moderator's Note: Thanks for sending these along. First, the newspaper
account which started the discussion, then the responses: PT]
==========
The following article is from the Los Angeles Times, Wednesday,
December 13, 1989, page A1.
Running Out of Numbers, L.A. to Get 3rd Area Code
by Paul Feldman
Times Staff Writer
Times staff writers John H. Lee and Jocelyn Stewart contributed
to this report.
The mathematics of life in the Los Angeles metropolis is about to
become a bit more complicated. In a city where commutes already are
defined by numerical sequences -- as in, take the 110 to the 10 to the
405, and if you hit the 101 you've gone too far -- an unprecedented
third telephone area code is in the works, officials announced
Tuesday.
In February, 1992, the boundaries of area code 213, which only
five years ago begat the 818 area code, will be split again, creating
a U-shaped sector of 2.4 million telephone customers with a new 310
area code.
The new district will include some of the city's priciest
neighborhoods -- Beverly Hills, Malibu, Santa Monica and the Palos
Verdes Peninsula. It also will serve more humble locales, such as
Downey, Whittier, Compton and Lynwood. Downtown Los Angeles and some
surrounding communities, such as Hollywood and Montebello, will remain
within the 213 area code.
At a joint press conference Tuesday, GTE California and Pacific
Bell officials said the addition of a third area code is necessary
because they simply are running out of phone numbers for Los Angeles.
It will become the first U.S. city encompassing three area codes --
and those with a more metropolitan view of the Southland might count
four codes, including Orange County's 714.
The announcement reflects the region's booming economy and
increasing reliance on new technology, such as fax machines and
cellular phones, according to Dominic Gomez, Pacific Bell regional
vice president.
"This explosion in technology has exhausted our prefixes at a
rate no one could have predicted," he said.
The cost of calls between the 213 and 310 area codes will remain
the same as before the split, officials said. Customers will retain
their existing seven-digit numbers.
Since the 818 code was introduced in the San Fernando and San
Gabriel valleys in 1984, an additional 1.3 million telephone lines
have been added within the 213 area code. Based on that rapid growth,
officials said, the phone companies would have run out of numbers by
the end of 1992.
With the new 310 code, those who let their fingers do the walking
are certain to get a bit more exercise. A caller one block east of La
Cienega Boulevard who wants to ring a pizza shop a block west of the
boulevard will now have to dial 11 numbers, as with any long-distance
call.
On the Westside, the rough dividing line between the 213 and 310
area codes will be La Cienega Boulevard, slicing West Hollywood in
half and resulting in immediate howls of protest from community
officials and business people.
"This will have a serious impact on certain businesses in my
city," said West Hollywood Mayor Abbe Land, who was not consulted
before the announcement. "Now people will have to say, 'Oh, that
business is on Fairfax and I'll have to dial one prefix,' or 'Oh, this
is west of La Cienega, I'll have to dial another prefix.' That's
unacceptable."
Land, whose City Hall office will now be in a different area code
than her home, said that the city of West Hollywood will explore
possible legal action.
Defending the decision, telephone company officials said the new
boundaries are governed by technological considerations rather than
political guidelines. Rather than relying on city borders, they based
the new districts on telephone prefixes.
"We looked at dozens of plans and there are no plans where some
communities weren't impacted," said Pacific Bell media relations
manager Kathleen Flynn. "This is the plan with the least amount of
impact."
One rejected alternative, officials said, would have kept Los
Angeles International Airport and the Port of Los Angeles in the 213
area code. Growth patterns are such that such a split would have
forced yet another new area code within 13 years, they said.
With the plan announced Tuesday, officials said, Los Angeles will
not run out of phone numbers again before the year 2015.
The new division also reflects phone usage patterns, according to
Stephanie Bradfield, GTE public affairs director. Los Angeles and
Hollywood were kept together, she said, in part because of the large
number of calls between the two communities. Bradfield warned against
trying to read too much into the divisions: Creating a new status code
was not the intent.
"Where there were strong ties, we tried to keep communities
together," she said. " . . . [But] this is basically a technical
engineering decision, not a social engineering decision. The code
cuts a wide swath through the entire community."
The choice of 310 as the new area code was a matter of deduction.
There were but nine remaining area codes available in the United
States, telephone officials said. Seven of these duplicated existing
prefixes within the 213 area code. That meant the choice boiled down
to 310 or 210.
Gomez of Pacific Bell said 310 won out because it was distinct
from the existing 213 code. That the 210 code duplicated the numbers
of the Foothill Freeway apparently was not a factor.
The new 310 code, which will take effect Feb. 1, 1992, is being
assigned to 2.4 million customers. That will leave 2.6 million in the
213 code.
As when the 818 area code was introduced, phone subscribers will
have a grace period in which they can use either code. In this case
it will be three months. But that provided little consolation to some
telephone customers when they heard of the change.
"This will greatly confuse things," said Mitchell Ogas, manager
of Sunset West Beauty Salon in West Hollywood. "You may be just down
the street, but it will seem a world away with another area code. It
will be much more complicated that with 818 . . . . I would think
they would have broken it up by city boundaries."
Several businesses on La Cienega Boulevard with two phone lines
will now have one in each area code. This is because their telephones
have different prefixes, one served by each area code.
"This is going to be terrible. At Laffs R Us, we are not
laughing today," said Susan Valerie, program director of a "comedy
traffic school" on La Cienega.
Among the few happy businesses contacted Tuesday were those that
will get extra work printing new business cards, stationery or shop
signs.
"It will be an inconvenience for most businesses, except for
printing," said Robert Davidson, a production manager at Printmasters
in Los Angeles. "By the end of 1991, business will be booming. It
will be great."
Meanwhile, the city's top real estate brokers speculated that the
changes may actually reduce the status sometimes connected with area
codes.
"It's going to fragment that," said Fred Sands, a well-known real
estate executive. "You've got Beverly Hills sharing with San Pedro.
They're worlds apart."
Sands said that in the past he has heard people from Beverly
Hills put down San Fernando Valley residents as "real 818s."
"Perhaps," he said, "the area code won't signify as much as it
did before."
==========
>From: mcb@presto.IG.COM (Michael C. Berch)
Organization: IntelliGenetics, Inc., Mountain View, Calif. USA
Sigh. There's always some political bozo who wants to run off filing
protests because he/she has to dial a few extra numbers. What? My
home in a different area code than my office? Lawsuit! Lawsuit!
I hope the city of West Hollywood, or better yet Ms. Land personally,
will be forced to eat the cost of this litigation.
People *do* seem to take this sort of thing seriously, don't they...
Sheesh. We are located on the edge of Mountain View, and have to dial
1+408+number to dial numbers in Sunnyvale, two blocks away. I have
never heard anyone complain about this, except maybe those who had to
reprogram their autodialers.
Michael C. Berch
mcb@presto.ig.com / uunet!presto.ig.com!mcb
==========
>From: chuq@Apple.COM (Chuq Von Rospach)
Yah. When they went to split up 212 in New York, all the Brooklynites (and
other people who moved out of 212) claimed it was discrimination -- that the
'lesser' people were kicked out of the area code and were being
discriminated against by being forced into a second rate code.
sheesh.
Chuq Von Rospach <+> chuq@apple.com <+> [This is myself speaking]
==========
>From: hoffman@mantaray.cs.ucla.edu (Jeffrey M. Hoffman)
Excuse me, Michael, but as a taxpayer you should be more outraged at
the amount of money be spent on Prop 103 litigation. However, there
is merit to Abbe Land's argument--when NYC was split, 212 was retained
in Manhattan and the Bronx, and 718 for Queens, Brooklyn and Staten
Island. The business people in these boroughs were quite upset,
because previously they could list their address as NY, NY (with the
appropriate ZIP code) and have a 212 number. Thereby gaining the
prestige of a NYC address without the cost of a Manhattan location.
When 718 went into effect, these businesses could no longer "pretend"
to be in Manhattan, because it would be clear from the phone number
that they were in one of the less prestigous boroughs. Of course,
they lost their case.
However, NYC was split along county boundaries (each borough is really
a county). In the present case, the phone company is trying to split
up an incorporated city. This is particularly annoying since people
tend to associate a single area code with a particular subdivision.
For example, even though you live only two blocks from an area code
change, that change occurs ON A CITY BOUNDARY. It is easy for one to
remember that Sunnyvale is 408 and Mountain View is 415, but it would
be a lot harder to know whether a particular phone number is for a
location east or west of some random boulevard.
Think of the confusion that will arise in the future if this practice
is continued. I support Ms. Land's case. However, the phone company
does have a point--technically, the phone system was set up before
West Hollywood attained cityhood. This means that it was just an
unincorporated area of LA with no "political" boundaries. La Cienega
Avenue is a large street and was a logical division point for
switching equipment, etc., but it now divides the city of West
Hollywood and is no longer a "neat" way to subdivide LA area codes.
jeff
==========
>From: galcher@Apple.COM (Bill Galcher)
Organization: Apple Computer Inc, Cupertino, CA
Well, as it turns out, the above is not quite true either. I lived
and worked in Sunnyvale for a number of years, and part of Sunnyvale
is in (408) while other parts are in (415). The first/only time I
believe this became a concern was when they actually cracked down on
the area code usage. Up until 1982 (?), if you were in the 408 area
code, you could dial a number in the 415 area code by just dialing the
exchange WITHOUT the (415) at the beginning. When the 408 area code
wanted to start using some of the same exchanges that were in 415,
they started by giving you warning messages that "you had to dial 415
for that exchange and will no longer be able to use just the exhange
after such-and-such date", then let the call go through. That caused
a number of people to have to adjust their auto-dialers but did not
otherwise cause a major fuss.
Sheesh - it's just not that big a deal. So you have to buy new
stationary. So you might have to get a foreign exchange number in the
other area code. BFD. It's certainly not worth getting this bent out
of shape about. Leave it to someone in West Hollywood to get in a
tizzy about this.
Bill Galcher
==========
>From: mcb@presto.IG.COM (Michael C. Berch)
Organization: IntelliGenetics, Inc., Mountain View, Calif. USA
> Excuse me, Michael, but as a taxpayer you should be more outraged at the
> amount of money be spent on Prop 103 litigation.
Well, I am, but I look at that as more or less unavoidable. The
people of California were stupid enough to enact an intitiative that
was both unworkable and partially unconstitutional, and those
adversely affected by it went to court and won their case. I would
love to claim some sort of exemption from having to pay for the
litigation by showing that I wasn't silly enough to vote for 103 in
the first place, but unfortunately it doesn't work that way...
> However, there is merit
> to Abbe Land's argument--when NYC was split, 212 was retained in Manhattan
> and the Bronx, and 718 for Queens, Brooklyn and Staten Island. The business
> people in these boroughs were quite upset, because previously they could
> list their address as NY, NY (with the appropriate ZIP code) and have a
> 212 number. Thereby gaining the prestige of a NYC address without the cost
> of a Manhattan location.
So what? How does that lend merit to Ms. Land's argument? Do you
think that firms have a property right in being able to attempt to
mislead people about their address? I'm *real* impressed by that one.
Furthermore, they weren't supposed to use "New York NY" as their post
office address anyway; I remember reading that NYC was divided up into
a number of so-called "Post Offices" (no correspondence with real Post
Office buildings) where only Manhattan was "New York", Brooklyn, [The]
Bronx, and Richmond used their borough names, and Queens was divided
up into three or four "P.O.'s": Long Island City, Flushing, and Forest
Hill among them.
> occurs ON A CITY BOUNDARY. It is easy for one to remember that Sunnyvale
> is 408 and Mountain View is 415, but it would be a lot harder to know
> whether a particular phone number is for a location east or west of some
> random boulevard.
It's not that simple here, either. The dividing line is by NXX
(prefix), not city/county lines. Near El Camino Real, where we are,
the line follows the city boundary, but there are parts of Sunnyvale
in 415.
> Think of the confusion that will arise in the future if this practice is
> continued. I support Ms. Land's case.
But what is the "case" based on? What duty does Pac Bell owe to a
city not to assign phone numbers in a particular way? On what legal
theory is that duty based? Does the city of West Hollywood have a
compensable property interest in the way the telephone network
namespace is divided?
I got several pieces of mail about my posting, and all the northern
California people shared my amusement that anyone would get excited
about such a non-issue, and all the southern California people tried
to explain (though they didn't agree that Mayor Land had a case) why
it was an issue. Sheesh. All I can recommend is that you Angelinos
change out of the fast lane for a while and mellow out a bit; you
might enjoy life more.
And as for those who suggested that I thought the way I did because
the change doesn't affect me -- you should all know that 415 is being
split even sooner than 213 -- my house in the East Bay will be moving
to the new area code 510. Since hearing this news a few months ago, I
have spent at least a good 20 or 30 seconds worrying about it. :-)
Michael C. Berch
mcb@presto.ig.com / uunet!presto.ig.com!mcb
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End of TELECOM Digest Special: NPA 213 Controversy
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