WASHINGTON-A plan from the U.S. Department of Transportation to institute a nationwide three-digit number for traffic information may be derailed by a call from MCI WorldCom Inc. for a complete rule making into how abbreviated numbers are allocated.
The idea works something like this: You are new in town, on your way to work and you hit rush-hour traffic. How do you find out if there is an alternate route, or what is causing the back-up? If there was a nationwide number for traffic information, say 211, you could dial it, and presto, have the information.
Vice President Al Gore touted the idea earlier this year and the Transportation Department in March asked the Federal Communications Commission to designate a three-digit number to be used nationwide for traffic information. The FCC put the DOT petition out for comment. Reply comments were filed Aug. 20.
Many participants in the reply-comment round believed DOT specifically asked for the designation of 211 as the traffic information number. However, DOT denied this, saying it just asked for a nationwide designation.
The FCC officially designated only three numbers: 911 for emergency calls, 311 for nonemergency calls, and 711 for Telecommunications Relay Services for the deaf. The numbers 411, 611, and 811 are broadly used by the telephone industry but have not been officially designated. This leaves only 011, 111, 211, and 511 available for designation.
Sprint PCS, which uses 211 for traffic information, said it supported the use of 511 for such information. It does not, however, support the idea of traffic information coming exclusively from local and state governments.
MCI is not interested in the DOT concept and indeed is worried the FCC is giving away a valuable resource. The FCC instead should institute a complete rule making on abbreviated dialing, MCI said.
MCI said it “supports the use of abbreviated dialing arrangements to serve important public service goals, such as the function proposed by DOT … [but] essential questions remain to be decided in a rule making by the [FCC] before this numbering resource is exhausted.”
This assertion was called meritless by AT&T Corp. MCI’s real goal, according to AT&T, is to re-argue issues decided earlier this year by the Abbreviated Dialing Ad Hoc Working Group to the North American Numbering Council.
“In the abbreviated dialing arrangements docket, MCI not only attacked the conclusions of the working group, but also accused it of bad faith, arguing that its members favored [incumbent local exchange carriers] and wireless carriers,” AT&T said.
The Cellular Telecommunica-tions Industry Association also believes abbreviated numbers are a scarce resource and for this reason, urged the FCC to “address its policy governing the nationwide assignment of N11 codes.”
CTIA said it also is concerned about how such a dialing arrangement would be implemented.
“As the wireless industry well knows from its efforts to implement E911 services, implementation of N11 code (or any other abbreviated dialing code) requires extensive coordination to resolve routing, interconnection and jurisdictional issues … For example, the [commercial mobile radio service] carriers serving Washington, D.C., also serve much of Virginia, Maryland and even corners of Delaware and West Virginia … The potential clearly exists for multiple numbers in each city,” CTIA said.
The Personal Communications Industry Association did not take an official position on the issue.
