Connection: Numbers Please

Sun., Dec. 31, 2000

By Bert Caldwell bertc@spokesman.com (509) 459-5450

Washington regulators last month blocked the imposition of a second area code on Eastern Washington by ordering telephone companies to pool their individual reservoirs of unused numbers.

The phone industry and NeuStar Inc., a private company charged with managing the nation’s number system, in April estimated prefixes available under the 509 area code would be exhausted by April 2002. A second three-digit code for all new numbers issued in the region was proposed.

The Washington Utilities and Transportation Commission balked.

Instead, the companies will have to make available an estimated 300,000 numbers issued for the Spokane area but not yet in use.

The order should delay imposition of a new area code for the Spokane area by almost a year, and for the rest of Eastern Washington by more than two years, according to Qwest, the service provider in Spokane.

In Idaho, meanwhile, NeuStar projects 208 area code numbers will run out in the first quarter of 2003.

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Connection: Numbers Please

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