WASHINGTON-The wireless industry will not suffer if customers are assigned telephone numbers with specific area codes, a state regulator told the Federal Communications Commission last month.
“Certainly, one of the most powerful industries in the country today-experiencing near 40-percent growth rates-cannot be stopped or even slowed by having its own area code,” said James Bradford Ramsay, general counsel to the National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners.
Ramsay’s comments repeated the views of Jack R. Goldberg, a commissioner of the Connecticut Department of Public Utility Control. Goldberg made his comments during a series of meetings he, Ramsay and Thomas J. Dunleavy, commissioner of the New York State Department of Public Service, had with all five commissioners and FCC staff on May 31.
The Connecticut commission asked the FCC more than two years ago to allow it to assign wireless customers telephone numbers with a specific area code. The FCC teed up the issue more than a year ago, but did not rule on it when it released its number-conservation rules in March.
The wireless industry consistently has argued that a technology-specific overlay (TSO) is anti-competitive and unnecessary. These calls were repeated last week.
“We feel it is not fair to single out wireless customers when it comes to area-code relief,” said Andrea Linskey, spokeswoman for Verizon Wireless.
“Some of the states would like the FCC to believe that TSOs fit in with number conservation, but they have to show how stranding an area code” would preserve numbers, said Lori Messing, director of numbering issues for the Cellular Telecommunications Industry Association.
Technology-specific area codes “ghetto-ize” wireless customers, who must dial 10 digits to reach areas where wireline customers only must dial seven digits, said Harold Salters, director of government relations for the Personal Communications Industry Association.
These statements confused Goldberg, who said he couldn’t understand that thinking. “We don’t understand how it is anti-competitive. People buy cell phones by the bus loads and they will continue to do so even if there is a technology-specific overlay,” said Goldberg.
New York had a TSO for wireless-917-for several years but as numbers started running out in other area codes, it was opened up to all technologies.
Whether the New York experience was a success or failure depends on who is talking.
The wireless industry points to the fact that the 917 area code eventually was opened to technologies to show that TSOs don’t work.
Goldberg sees it differently. “917 was actually a very successful experiment. They had five, six, seven good years.”
