Creating a nongovernmental United States Numbering Association to administer phone numbers will offer “an independent administrator, with a neutral governing board for which all carriers will be eligible,” said the Cellular Telecommunications Industry Association.
CTIA recently proposed USNA to the Federal Communications Commission. The FCC has unsuccessfully pondered the need to create a new numbering authority for four years, CTIA said.
“Telephone numbers are a scarce resource, and therefore of great competitive significance,” said CTIA President Thomas Wheeler.
USNA would be the new administrator of the exhausted, 48-year-old North American Numbering Plan, now handled by Bell Communications Research Inc. Bellcore announced in 1993 it no longer wanted the responsibility. Some industry players had attacked Bellcore, claiming it favored the regional Bell operating companies which own it; Bellcore denied the allegation.
The USNA would be overseen by a board of directors made up of representatives from telecommunications industry segments that use the numbering resources, under CTIA’s plan.
“It is crucial that the numbering administrator be unbiased and have the appearance of no bias to build credibility,” said CTIA. “The entire industry agrees that the administrator should be recognized as neutral and independent of any one type of service provider.”
Funding for the proposed USNA would come from users of the numbers. Initial funding for USNA’s development could be provided by current number users, possibly based on how many NXX (central office code) numbers are in use. Regular funding for operating revenue could be derived from fee-per-number assignments, CTIA said. USNA’s primary responsibility would be assigning central office codes and area codes.
The CTIA plan suggests that the USNA office have a 10-member staff based in Washington, D.C., for easy access to the FCC. An executive director would lead the office. USNA would administer only the resources of U.S. carriers because of Canadian and Caribbean sovereignty issues.
“It would be best,” the CTIA proposal states, “if Canada, the United States and other countries would work together in international numbering strategies in lieu of the United States attempting to assume and/or assert control over another country’s domain.”
All numbering assignments would be made through computerized databases, based on uniform criteria adopted by the board of directors, according to the CTIA plan.
CTIA said 80,000 new numbers are assigned each day, and two out of three of these are given to wireless phone and paging customers.
Four years ago, the National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners asked the FCC to look into future administration of the numbering plan. The FCC received comments on the petition and in April 1994 issued a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking on the matter. A declaratory ruling and order was released in January, in which the FCC authorized the Common Carrier Bureau to act for the commission in resolving number allocation disputes.
“The FCC has invited further dispute by failing to resolve (the matter),” CTIA said.
When the original numbering system was adopted, there were fewer than 35 million phones in the United States; there are four times that many today. In markets throughout the nation, new area codes are being applied as overlays or geographic slits. Some customers must change their dialing habits or even dial 10 digits for calls within their area.
