he Massachusetts Department of Telecommunications and Energy said this week it will hold hearings next month to discuss the creation of four new area codes for Eastern Massachusetts. Once again, it seems, Massachusetts regulators are facing a difficult question: Should they geographically split the area codes, the same way that the 617 and 508 area codes were split when the 781 and 978 codes were created, or should they adopt an overlay plan, in which the new area codes would be laid over the existing ones?
The big advantage of a geographical split is dialing. With a split, Grandma can call across the street by dialing seven digits. The big advantage of an overlay plan is that nobody has to change area codes.
Two years ago, the Department of Public Utilities, under considerable pressure from the Legislature, mandated that Eastern Massachusetts take the geographical split. Officials said nobody would have to change phone numbers. What they didn't realize at the time was that in today's regional and national economy, a person's area code is just as much a part of a phone number as the last seven digits.
The split was supposed to create enough new telephone numbers to last for nearly a decade. The fact that we are running out now is the result of a number of factors. First, a few towns, such as Watertown and Belmont, were switched from 781 into 617 as the result of political pressure. A second problem has to do with allocation: The telephone companies aren't using the numbers as efficiently as they could.
But the fundamental reason behind the need for new area codes is that people are using more telephone numbers, a direct result of the expansion in cellular telephones, pagers, Internet access, and large corporations with direct-inward dialing.
For the past 20 years, the Internet has had to wrestle with these same issues of expansion and renumbering. But unlike users of the telephone system, Internet users have been largely isolated from the dislocations that come with growth.
Regulators and technologists planning the future of the telephone system could learn much from the Internet. Every computer on the Internet has its own unique number, called an Internet Protocol address. These numbers are roughly the same size as 10-digit phone numbers; where there are 10 billion possible 10-digit phone numbers, there are 4 billion possible 32-bit IP addresses.
Local dialing has always been a distinctive feature of the telephone system. If you want to call the Massachusetts State House from Boston, you dial 727-2121; to call from California, you need to dial 1-617-727-2121. The IP protocol, on the other hand, has never had local dialing. No matter whether your computer is opening up a connection to a computer on the other side of the office or the other side of the world, it uses a 32-bit IP address.
Like the telephone system, the Internet's 4 billion IP addresses are split up according to geography and by provider.
The domain name system works like a big White Pages, but with an important difference. Whereas you might look up the number of the Massachusetts State House just once and then write down 617-727-2121 and use that number forever, your computer looks up the IP address of ''www.state.ma.us'' practically every time you turn on your computer, and it jumps to the state's Web site.
One of the big reasons the Internet has been so successful is backwards compatibility. With very rare exceptions, a computer that was on the Internet in 1983 could still function today, nearly 16 years later.
The same can't be said of the telephone system. With the splitting of area codes and changes in dialing rules, the system requires constant reprogramming.
One way around the need to frequently reprogram systems would be for Bell Atlantic to adopt 11-digit dialing on an optional basis. Bell Atlantic could do this today, without the need for regulatory approval.
What ''11-digit'' dialing means is that any person inside Massachusetts could dial the number 1, the area code they are calling, and a phone number and have the call connected. This would work if you were in Cambridge calling Boston or calling Martha's Vineyard or even calling California.
Essentially, 11-digit dialing means that the telephone system would adopt the Internet's attitude toward addresses. Every phone number would work equally well anywhere in the system, without the need for special dialing rules. This plan would simplify the programming of automatic dialers, and it would make life considerably easier for people who travel among area codes.
Another way to handle the problem is to end area-code splitting and phone-number changing. Now that we have seen firsthand the disruption of changing several million phone numbers, we should do everything possible to avoid having to do that again. This means adopting an overlay plan.
Bell Atlantic agrees. ''We continue to favor an overlay. We think that it is the least disruptive to customers,'' says John Johnson, a spokesman for Bell Atlantic. ''As you continue splitting and make the area codes smaller and smaller, they lose any geographical identity. But the worst part is the requirement that half the people give up their telephone numbers each time there is a split. That is the thing that causes the most confusion and the most cost for people.''
Technology writer Simson L. Garfinkel can be reached at
plugged-in@simson.net.
You can learn more about area codes and telephone numbers at the Web site of the North American Numbering Plan Administration: www.nanpa.com.
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