Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, November 1, 1995 TAG: 9511010054
SECTION: BUSINESS PAGE: B-6 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: WASHINGTON LENGTH: Medium
A new breed of area codes being implemented in many parts of the country is baffling business switchboards. The federal government and the telephone industry hope to change that todaywith an ad campaign to educate people about the changes.
Since the beginning of this year, new area codes have been assigneed to 11 sections of the country - including Western Virginia, with 540, as well as Alabama, Colorado and Washington state.
From November through next year, nine areas - Chicago, Dallas, Miami, Missouri, North Florida, Ohio, Oregon, South Carolina and Southern California - will add new codes. By next year, 23 new codes - including one for toll-free 800 service - are slated to be in operation, affecting millions of people, the Federal Communications Commission said.
Most residential telephone users should have no trouble dialing the new area codes, the FCC said, because their calls are routed through local telephone networks that have been equipped to handle them.
So why are business switchboards baffled?
Unlike existing area codes, the new ones don't have a 0 or a 1 in the middle. Instead, they use the numbers 2 through 9 as the middle digit. Private switchboards, known in telecommunication lingo as PBXs, don't recognize these new codes, making it impossible to dial calls to them.
Companies that use PBXs can either upgrade or replace their systems. Upgrade costs range from $850 to $17,500, according to the telephone industry.
Up to 50 percent of PBX systems have not been upgraded, said Elizabeth Brooks, spokeswoman for the United States Telephone Association. PBX systems are widely used by government offices, hospitals and schools as well as businesses, said the FCC, which does not regulate them.
``Don't get stuck in the middle,'' warn the ads running in USA Today and The Wall Street Journal.
The ads, paid for by the telephone industry, offer a telephone number - (281) 792-9999 - for businesses and other PBX users to call at no cost to test whether their equipment can reach the new codes. Those whose PBX systems fail the test can get help by calling another toll-free number in the ad - (800) 218-6436.
Kathleen Wallman, chief of the FCC's Common Carrier Bureau, said PBX makers and telephone companies have done a good job getting the word out, but some companies are discarding information sent to them.
``Some companies think it is a marketing pitch,'' she said. ``They don't realize the importance and urgency of upgrading the switch.''
The new area codes are being instituted because all codes under the old plan, dating to the 1940s, have been exhausted because of the explosion of such services as cellular phones, fax machines and pagers and the need for second telephone lines for personal computers.
Bellcore, an industry group responsible for administering telephone numbers, assigned the last of the original 144 area codes - 610 - to southeastern Pennsylvania two years ago.
The new area-code plan will make it possible to create 640 new area codes and up to five billion new telephone numbers, the FCC said. The FCC doesn't expect the new codes to be depleted until well beyond 2000.
by CNB