Debate over the future of the 760 area code reopened yesterday as an overflow crowd at Carlsbad City Hall urged state regulators to reconsider an April decision to require a geographic split for a new 442 area code in North County.
With the support of a new ally, the U.S. Marine Corps, opponents argued that the cost of an area code switch is too much of a burden for businesses.
“We have 10,500 Marines from Camp Pendleton in Iraq,” said Col. James Seaton, the base commander. “When they return, all their family numbers will have changed, all their home numbers will have changed, all their work numbers will have changed.”
In an unusual move leading up to yesterday's hearing, the California Public Utilities Commission agreed last month to reconsider its four-month-old decision to split the 760 area in two. It would require that all North San Diego County telephone customers with 760 numbers change to new 442 numbers. The switch is set to take place in November.
The majority of an estimated 200 residents, officials and business owners at the hearing urged the PUC to overlay the new 442 area code over the full 760 area instead of splitting the region into two area codes. It would require phone customers to dial 10 digits instead of seven for all calls. It also would mean that some customers would have one area code for home phones and another for cell phones.
The commission had called the April decision final but reopened the public comment process after a grass-roots online movement sent nearly 6,000 e-mails to the commission and elected state and county officials, including the governor. Leucadia resident Scott Chatfield launched the Web site keep760.org, which generated the e-mail petitions.
At yesterday's hearing, Seaton apologized for not weighing in before the April decision, saying a focus on the war kept his staff from assessing the impact.
“This one kind of got away from us,” he said. The base handles 2.5 million calls a month, mostly incoming. An area code switch would require money and resources to educate outside callers of the change, he said.
In addition, the base is part of a separate military phone system, the Defense Switched Network, which would require extensive reprogramming to work with a new area code. Also, tens of thousands of personnel records would need to be manually changed, he said.
“Can it be done? Yes,” Seaton said. “But does it need to be done at this moment when our attention is focused elsewhere?”
The Marine commander was joined by business owners and chambers of commerce officials in urging the commission to reconsider the split.
Business owner Dee Layden of Ocean Sky Beads and Glass showed up in a T-shirt bearing the company name and its 760 phone number. She waved a promotional pen at PUC officials printed with the name and number.
“My advertising budget is already spent,” she said. “If I have to replace all the shirts, pens and window signs, I'm out $2,500.”
More important, she stands to lose business from customers who won't find the new number, she said.
“When they call the 760 number and don't get me, they're going to think we've gone out of business,” Layden said.
Before the start of public comment, a commission staff member said that in the earlier public hearings, 75 percent of speakers supported an area code split.
However, yesterday's turnout clearly changed that ratio. Commissioner Timothy Simon, the lone dissenter in the April decision said the overflow crowd made an impression.
“This type of turnout, this much outcry, is unusual for the PUC,” said Simon, the only commissioner present.
Whether it will sway the commission to reconsider its earlier decision remains to be seen. Reopening hearings doesn't necessarily mean the commission will change its decision and adopt the plan that Seaton and others prefer – one that would overlay the 442 area code for new telephone customers throughout the 760 service area.
Telephone service providers are under orders to continue their network preparations to implement the 442 area code split, scheduled to take effect Nov. 8. But the PUC directed the carriers to postpone customer notification of the 442 change until the matter has been reconsidered.
The commission is also expediting the process so the five commissioners can consider “the full range of options” at their Oct. 16 meeting.
A new 442 area code is needed because population growth and the proliferation of wireless phones and devices has nearly exhausted the 7.9 million numbers created when the 760 area code was established in 1997.
Jonathan Sidener: (619) 293-1239; jonathan.sidener@uniontrib.com
