(Photo: An overflow crowd at a Calfornia Public Utilites hearing on changing the 760 telephone are code. Alison St John/KPBS )
It was an overflow crowd at a State public hearing in Carlsbad on San Diego’s 760 area code. Residents protested a decision to change North County’s phone code to 442 and let the Inland Empire keep 760. KPBS reporter Alison St John has more.
North County may yet keep it’s 760 area code… if the Public Utilities Commission is swayed by hours of testimony about the hardships a change would be to people like realtor William Ims .
I have survived 4 area code changes serving this community from 213 to 714 to 619 to 760 each time it has become more expensive and more detrimental to my business.
Ims estimates it would cost him $2,000 up front and he would lose many far flung customers.
An Oceanside city official estimated local businesses in their city alone would generate over a million in printing revenues to retool all their letterhead.
And Marine Colonel Jim Seaton said a change would affect more than 30 thousand designated phone lines on Camp Pendleton that receive and send 2.5 million calls a month. He also appealed on behalf of the 10 thousand marines serving overseas.
Seaton : Who, if things stand as they currently are will find that when they return home from overseas will find that their home numbers their cork numbers and their cell numbers have changed.
PUC Commissioners acknowledged that most people would prefer what’s called an area code “overlay.” Instead of creating a geographic split, existing phone customers would keep their numbers and new customers would get the new code… 442.
One implication of that would be …everyone in the are would have to dial 10 numbers, even for local calls.
The full Commission will vote on next month on whether to split the area or go with an overlay .
Alison St John, KPBS News.
