WASHINGTON-The Clinton administration last week proposed to auction toll-free 888 telephone numbers, a potential hot-button issue for Congress that could hurt paging operators in the near term and pocket telephone firms in the future.
The proposal, pegged to raise $700 million over three years, is part of the White House’s proposed $1.64 trillion budget for fiscal 1997. The administration wants to bring in $1.6 billion overall from auctions in fiscal 1997 and $32 billion by 2002, projections that depend on Congress expanding the Federal Communications Commission’s auction authority to encompass private wireless, broadcast and service area codes.
FCC Chairman Reed Hundt, an avid auction proponent who will have generated more than $16 billion from the sale of wireless licenses after the C-block personal communications services auction ends, supports 888 telephone number auctions.
“We are opposed to the auctioning of any telephone numbers,” said Jay Kitchen, president of the Personal Communications Industry Association. The paging industry depends heavily on 800 numbers, which have been depleted because of their popularity and will be succeeded by new 888 numbers. There are 7.5 million 888 telephone numbers, suggesting perhaps the Office of Management and Budget expects to get around $100 for each number.
“These numbers are the means by which people communicate with other people and should not be looked upon as a revenue source,” added Kitchen. To auction 888 numbers would create an unfair disadvantage to the paging industry, specifically.
Paging operators today get toll-free telephone numbers for a nominal fee primarily from long-distance carriers. They can be used as vanity numbers-as in 1-800-SKYPAGE-by companies or can be assigned by wireless carriers to subscribers. SkyTel Corp., a Jackson, Miss.-based nationwide paging operator, acquired a quarter of a million 800 telephone numbers for its customers.
If Clinton succeeds in getting toll-free 888 numbers sold, number crunchers in the Office of Management and Budget and in Congress could look next to 500 follow-me telephone numbers sought by pocket telephone companies.
“Good money does not always make good policy,” said Thomas Wheeler, president of the Cellular Telecommunications Industry Association. “It used to be, `Hey, if it moves, tax it. Not, if it moves, let’s auction it.’*” He added that any auctioned 500 numbers would represent a hidden tax on consumers.
Even before last Tuesday’s release of the Clinton budget, battle lines were being drawn over the 888 auction issue.
Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), an ardent backer of broadcast auctions, is also championing the cause for 888 telephone number auctions. But he faces opposition from freshman Congressman Dan Frisa (R-N.J.), who has become an influential member of the House telecommunications subcommittee.
“There has been no analysis of the potential impact of this proposal on consumers, non-profits, businesses, and even the federal agencies which regularly rely on toll-free numbers to operate,” said Frisa in a recent letter to colleagues designed to get the attention of Budget Committee Chairman John Kasich (R-Ohio). “The House and Senate Commerce Committees should be given the opportunity to conduct hearings on this issue,” added Frisa. “Approving this proposal in the darkness of ignorance is simply not good lawmaking or good public policy.”
“I don’t think it’s going to make much money,” predicted Colleen Boothby, a former FCC official who now represents large business users of 800 numbers.
