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Remember 727 today or hang up, dial again
By EVE TAHMINCIOGLU © St. Petersburg Times, published February 1, 1999 Today, Tampa Bay area residents must come to terms with the 727 area code. But it won't be the last time the region will have to master three new digits. In the next three to five years, yet another area code will be needed as numbers in the pared-down 813 area code again run out. Even the new 727 won't last forever -- maybe six to eight years. "We're talking about a finite number of numbers," said Rebecca Barnhart, a spokeswoman for the North American Numbering Plan Administration, an independent Washington agency under contract to the Federal Communications Commission to assign and track area codes. Blame it, if you like, on the execs who parade around downtown Tampa with cellular phones sprouting from their ears. Fault the residents of St. Petersburg whose annoying beepers go off while they're dining out. Or lay the responsibility at the door of every Florida household with two or more phone lines for things such as faxes and computer modems. Those gadgets, with all their phone numbers, are eating away at the region's pool of area codes. That's one reason the new 727 code takes effect today in most of Pinellas County and western Pasco County. And that's one of the reasons why it won't be sufficient for all that long. About 36.7 percent of Florida households have cellular phones, 21.9 percent have beepers or pagers, and 24 percent have two lines or more, according to a recent survey of 1,582 residents by the state Public Service Commission and the University of Florida's Bureau of Economic and Business Research Survey Program. Statewide, that translates into roughly 2.2-million cellular phones, 1.3-million beepers and 1.4-million homes with two or more lines. "People now live the kind of lifestyles where it's not uncommon to have more than one number assigned to them," said Kevin Bloom, a PSC spokesman. This trend, along with Florida's growing population, is driving the area-code drain. But critics of the phone companies, noting that each area code has 8-million possible numbers, say that consumers don't deserve all the blame. They criticize the longtime national policy of assigning phone numbers to telecommunications companies in blocs of 10,000. If GTE, a wireless phone provider or even a tiny pager company fails to use all the numbers, the critics say, the extras go unused. The Federal Communications Commission is studying ways to reclaim some of the numbers that phone companies have locked up. In the meantime, though, area codes continue to multiply. Before 1988, there were three area codes in the state. Today, there are 11. "We could have another 10 in 10 years," Bloom said. The PSC recently began holding workshops to consider how to handle depletion of numbers in the 941 area code covering 13 Southwest Florida counties, including Polk, Sarasota and Manatee. "It's going to be exhausted by the end of the year," GTE spokesman Al Harshbarger said. And the 352 area code, covering northeastern Pasco and nine counties including Citrus and Hernando, will be exhausted by 2006, according to the numbering administration. The area code problem is nationwide, but there still are 14 states with only one area code. Maine, for example, is proud of its statewide 207 area code. But even with only 1.2-million residents, state regulators are feeling pressure to add another, said Jim Doyle, utilities analyst for Maine's Public Utilities Commission. "It's our intent to do everything we can to hold it off."
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