Utah's newest area code, covering Utah, Davis, Weber and Morgan counties, will be 385.
The announcement came Monday from the North American Numbering Plan Administration, which accepted the Utah Public Service Commission's proposal to limit the 801 area code to Salt Lake County only instead of blanketing the Wasatch Front with two overlapping area codes.
Beginning Dec. 31, Utah, Davis, Weber and Morgan counties will officially be part of the 385 area, though a "permissive" period will make dialing the new code optional indefinitely.
During the permissive period, callers phoning into the new area can dial either 801 or 385; or dial without using either area code if the call is local.
Areas of the state in the 435 area code are unaffected by the change. Long-distance boundaries will not change, though callers in Bountiful, for example, will eventually have to dial 10 digits to
reach local numbers in Salt Lake City, and vice-versa.
The permissive period will give residential and business phone customers time to adjust to the change, print new stationary and re-program automatic dialers on computers and fax machines, said John Harvey, telecommunications specialist for the PSC. Just how long the permissive period lasts depends on the success of a number-pooling conservation plan the PSC is pursuing.
"The commission's goal is to try to get a higher rate of utilization out of the existing numbers," Harvey said.
Telecommunications companies — US WEST, all of the wireless phone providers and many new US WEST competitors — are issued blocks of phone numbers 10,000 at a time, all starting with the same three-digit prefix. All of the numbers in the 801 area beginning with 694, for example, belong to AirTouch. Telephone switching equipment, both hardware and software, knows how to route calls based on those three digits.
The PSC wants numbering blocks to be issued 1,000 at a time, starting with the fourth digit, so smaller blocks of unused numbers are tied up at any given time.
If the PSC is successful, as regulators in several other states have been, the permissive dialing period could continue for several years before the pool of available numbers in the 801 area runs out, Harvey said.
"That increases the amount of information that has to be programmed into the local switches and changes the software programs on the switches, " he said. "But if (a telecommunications company) is not using 3,000 of their 10,000 (block), we can ask them to give numbers back."
The numbering administration said Monday that the mandatory 385 area code would begin in mid-2001. The PSC plan would push that further into the future.
You can reach Steve Fidel by e-mail at steve@desnews.com