What?
There is not a shortage of available phone numbers? The rise in fax machines, pagers and cellular phones is not to blame for what is being perceived as a number shortage.
Instead, the telephone number shortage is because phone numbers are assigned in an old-fashioned and inefficient manner. For instance, telecom carriers and resellers are given phone numbers in blocks of 10,000, whether they need that many or not.
“Where Have All The Numbers Gone?,” a white paper released last week by The Ad Hoc Telecommunications Users Committee and the International Communications Association, says more than 75 new area codes have been or will be implemented in the near future. Yet, while 1.7 billion phone numbers have been given out, only 250 million are in use.
The white paper’s author, Dr. Lee Selwyn of Economics and Technology Inc. supports number pooling, rate-center consolidation and overlay codes for wireless services to solve the number crunch.
“Although mobile services do not create the same degree of extreme fragmentation of number resources that is typical of geographically fixed services, the attempt to satisfy the mobile services’ voracious demand for numbers out of the geographically fixed, highly fragmented number allocation plans have been the `straw that broke the camel’s back’ on the nation’s numbering system,” the report said. “The FCC should revisit and modify its 1995 declaratory ruling to permit states to adopt mobile overlay area code relief solutions.”
Selwyn says the wireless overlay solution is the most feasible. The industry, however, doesn’t like that solution because it unfairly singles out wireless users, who would have to go through the hassle of switching numbers.
Hmm, a problem with no simple solution …
I know: Why not sell phone numbers to carriers, which could then pass on those charges to their customers and also make money for the government? Carriers that value the numbers the most would be willing to pay for them. Companies that have been hoarding phone numbers might not be so quick to keep going that route … What could go wrong?
