Arkansas' 870 area code likely will run out of numbers by late 2011, leading some companies to ask for permission to add a second area code over the same area.
The second area code, called an overlay, would require 10-digit dialing for all numbers in the 870 area code. That area code covers a backward crescent across the state that includes Jonesboro, Mountain Home, Pine Bluff and Texarkana. The Little Rock metropolitan area is covered by the 501 area code, while northwest Arkansas is in the 479 area code.
Since September 2003, the telecommunications industry has been planning for the day when the 870 area code — introduced in 1997 when it split from the 501 area code — would exhaust its supply of numbers.
The region covered by an area code can run short of phone numbers for a variety of reasons that range from additional service providers — such as phone and cable companies — entering the market to business expansion and the continued rise of cell phone use, said David Avery, a spokesman for Little Rock-based Windstream Corp.
Such numbers serve as gateways not only to traditional voice traffic, but various types of data as well as Internet service.
"Traditional carriers, newer carriers, landline service, wireless service — all of these need blocks of numbers," Avery told the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.
In March, the industry revisited discussions on 870's fate after officials from AT&T Inc., Verizon Communications Inc. and Sprint Nextel Corp. each sent letters advocating an overlay system. Overlays are preferred by many carriers because they don't require customers and businesses to change their telephone numbers, wrote Dana Crandall, Verizon's manager of numbering policy and standards.
"Splits impose technical difficulties and challenges ... that weren't known in September 2003," he said. "Overlays eliminate those difficulties."
Splitting an area code also forces wireless customers to reprogram handsets, something an overlay avoids. It also puts regulators such as the Arkansas Public Service Commission in a precarious position.
"Splits require the PSC to determine a winning and a losing side of the split, placing the burden of changing telephone numbers on the losing side," commission meeting minutes indicate.
Since 2003, a dozen overlays have been deployed in the United States and Canada, with 16 more planned or in progress over the next five years. Over the same period, only two area codes have been split and just one additional split is planned by 2014.
The PSC has yet to schedule hearings on when to consider the 870 overlay proposal.
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Information from: Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, http://www.arkansasonline.com
Copyright 2009 The Associated Press.
