More phones means more dialing

By BROOKE WOLFORD

Staff Writer

Idaho residents will no longer be able to assume their neighbors’ area code as they have for the past 70 years.

Telephone providers in Idaho notified customers this week that beginning in August, it will be necessary to dial the area code when making a call because the Idaho Public Utilities Commission assigned a new area code to Idaho residents.

Verizon notified its customers via text message on Thursday that “customers with a 208 area code must enter the area code for all calls.” AT&T also notified its customers through its online accounts inbox. Idaho telephone customers must start dialing 10 digits to make a call as of Aug. 5 and anyone who gets a new phone number after Sept. 5 will be assigned the area code 986.

In November of 2015, Idaho state regulators approved a 16-month plan for the implementation of a second area code in late 2017 after Neustar, a global information service provider and the agency that contracts with the federal government to administer the nation’s area code plans, filed an application for approval of a “relief plan” for Idaho’s 208 area code. Neustar found the area code would run out of available telephone numbers by the second quarter of 2018, which prompted the need for a second area code for the first time since the first one’s assignment in 1947.

Idaho was one of 12 states with a single area code left in the country, but half of those states proposed implementing a second area code in 2015. Neustar originally forecasted Idaho’s area code would be exhausted by August 2001, but the commission was able to extend that by implementing numerous successful numbers conservation plans. However, the proliferation of wireless telephones, new competitive telephone companies, paging and messaging services and Voice over Internet Protocol contributed to the increased demand for new numbers.

The commission adopted a plan that will be an “all-services overlay,” which assigned the new area code to new numbers only and allowed current residents to keep theirs as 208 after a unanimous recommendation from Idaho’s telecommunications providers and commission staff members. The caveat, though, is Idaho residents would be required to use “10-digit dialing,” or enter the area code when dialing a number.

The other option was to implement a “geographic split,” which would have assigned the new area code to one half of the state and allowed the other half to keep the current area code, meaning all customers assigned to the new area code would have their numbers changed. This option would have retained seven-digit dialing, but at the expense of major disruption and high costs.

The commission received 41 written comments about which method customers preferred, 27 of which cited the geographic split as the favored option. The commission decided upon the all-services overlay though because seven-digit dialing is expected to become obsolete in the future, and a geographic split would just prolong it for a short time.

The 16-month plan included a voluntary 10-digit dialing period that started in November 2016. In July 2016, the commission staff conducted workshops throughout the state to explain why a second area code became necessary and to inform customers of the deadlines to implement the second area code and begin 10-digit dialing.