FCC Opens Door For Wireless-Only Area Codes

Communications Today, Dec 14, 2001

The Federal Communications Commission changed its stance on technology- specific area codes and will allow states to assign wireless devices to different area codes than other telecom numbers in a market.

Before adopting changes for numbering resources in the North American Numbering Plan at its meeting on Wednesday, the FCC had twice denied requests from states to use technology-specific area codes after allowing a wireless-only 917 overlay area code to be opened in New York City in 1995.

However, the continued and accelerating exhaust of numbers within area codes prompted the FCC to lift its ban on technology-specific codes and to make other numbering-resource changes. The FCC did not approve all existing requests for technology-specific area codes, but said it would begin considering them.

Although the New York City move was intended to slow the depletion of numbers in the city's 212 area code, wireline numbers eventually were added to the 917 code after the 212 code was exhausted. A third area code, 646, also has been added to the city.

The Personal Communications Industry Association disagreed with the FCC's decision to lift the ban on technology-specific area codes. Harold Salters, PCIA's senior director for government relations, said assigning wireless operations, including paging services, to separate area codes will do little to help slow the exhaust of numbers from other area codes.

"It could end up being counter productive," Salters told Communications Today. "You could have states like New Mexico opening up technology-specific area codes for a very small universe of carriers. We don't have that many numbers left. That's only going to exacerbate the exhaust of the NANP."

The commission on Wednesday also voted not to lower the 60-percent utilization threshold required before telecom service providers can get additional number blocks in a service area and said it would deny numbering resources to carriers that are found to violate the Commission's numbering requirements. But the FCC said it also established a "safety valve" to allow carriers not meeting the growth numbering resources requirements to get needed numbers.

In addition, the commission voted to allow incumbent local exchange carriers to recover their carrier-specific costs directly related to implementing national 1,000-block number pooling if the costs are not recovered through existing rates. >TK