The Joplin Globe, Joplin, MO

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June 25, 2009

Oklahoma: Officials differ over who gets new area code

The Associated Press

OKLAHOMA CITY — The city manager of a rapidly growing northeastern Oklahoma community urged an administrative law judge Thursday to reject a recommendation that the region’s new area code be assigned to anyone who gets a new number in the area.

Rodney Ray, city manager of Owasso, a community of about 47,000 north of Tulsa, argued against the so-called overlay option and in favor of a plan that would use a geographic split, in which a line is drawn through the existing 918 area code. Those on one side of the line would keep their current area code; those on the other side would get the new area code.

Ray said the overlay option, in which people with new numbers get the new area code, regardless of where they live, would confuse the elderly and young people by requiring them to dial 10 digits, including the area code, to make a local call.

Ray said the city’s chamber of commerce and regional organizations, including the Indian Nations Council of Governments, have recommended using the split plan, which would require people to dial only seven digits to make a local call, as they do now.

“The least impact we could make on people’s lives ... would be to impose the split,” Ray told Jacquelyn Miller, an administrative law judge for the Oklahoma Corporation Commission.

The three-member commission, which regulates utilities and the oil and gas industry, is taking public comments and testimony on the proposed new area code. The North American Numbering Plan Administration, which works with the Federal Communications Commission, has predicted that the existing 918 area code will run out of telephone numbers by late 2011.

The new area code would be Oklahoma’s fourth and the first new one in the state in more than a decade. The 580 area code was implemented in 1998 for telephone numbers in western and southern Oklahoma after authorities said phone numbers in the 405 region would be exhausted that year.

The 405 area code continues to serve central Oklahoma, including metropolitan Oklahoma City.

Authorities have said an explosion of telecommunications devices along with “hidden” numbers assigned to such things as alarm systems and ATMs are eating up available numbers, forcing the need for a new area code in the part of the state that includes Tulsa, Oklahoma’s second-largest city.

The commission’s staff has recommended that the new code be implemented using the overlay method, similar to area codes created in a growing list of large cities such as Dallas and Los Angeles.

That recommendation was supported by an AT&T; manager, George Guerra, who testified that an overlay “is the most customer-friendly option” in that it allows existing telephone customers to keep their current numbers.

“Folks want to keep their number,” Guerra said. “Having their number not change is an extreme advantage.”

In addition, businesses are reluctant to change numbers out of concern that they may lose business. Guerra said regulators in other states have adopted the overlay method to avoid burdening businesses with the cost of changing telephone numbers on their stationery and advertising.

Miller began taking testimony in the case after an attempt by 15 rural telephone companies in the Tulsa area to block it was rejected. An attorney for the companies, Kendall Parrish, said they believe there is insufficient evidence that the 918 area code will run out of numbers by 2011.

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