DENVER-The Colorado Public Utilities Commission is considering a plan to provide a new area code just for wireless phones and pagers despite a 1995 ruling from the Federal Communications Commission that prohibits such action.
The CPUC believes Colorado will need a new area code by this summer and had decided last year that a new area code should be given to all new users. In January, it began looking into stacking a 720 area code on top of the 303 area code assigned for Denver and the surrounding suburbs, giving the new code only to pagers and mobile phones.
“As we’ve gone along, it’s an idea the public seems to embrace,” said Terry Bote, spokesman for the CPUC. “We’ve been getting calls from the public saying to assign this to wireless.”
But the idea isn’t embraced by wireless operators that have to incur the expense of reprogramming paging units and mobile phones. Personal communications services operators Sprint Spectrum L.P. and Western Wireless Corp. along with AT&T Wireless Services Inc. have filed documents protesting the plan. AT&T asked the CPUC to consider stipulating that, under existing FCC rules and orders, any technology-specific, service-specific or wireless-only overlay is prohibited.
Bote said the CPUC plans to hold an evidentiary hearing this week during which carriers and other interested parties will offer their witnesses and the public will have a chance comment on the plan.
“My understanding is that several states have filed challenges to [the FCC rule]. The FCC has not ruled on anything at this point. If the [CPUC] is determined that it wants to go wireless overlay, it will petition for a waiver.”
Michael Alschul, general counsel for the Cellular Telecommunications Industry Association, said Connecticut and Pennsylvania already have adopted similar area-code overlays that knowingly violate the FCC’s provisions. Connecticut has issued an order to seek a waiver from the FCC, he said.
The FCC ruled in 1995 that wireless-only overlays violate the Communications Act because they discriminate against wireless carriers after Ameritech Corp. proposed to stack area codes in Chicago, causing an uproar with wireless carriers.
The ruling, which officially went into place in 1996, has yet to be challenged. States seeking a waiver must show they have a unique situation that can only be remedied by bypassing the rule, said Mark Tauber, head of the communications group with the law firm Piper & Marbury L.L.P.
