Growth Drives Plan for 805 Area Code Split

VENTURA —  The 805 area code is getting a little cramped. In two years it will be full, and something will have to give.

Before the rapidly growing population covered by the area code--which includes Ventura County and the north end of Los Angeles County, including the cities of Santa Clarita, Palmdale and Lancaster--runs out of new telephone numbers, it will be split geographically.

The change is largely due to the explosion in demand for second lines, modems, fax machines, cell phones and pagers, officials said Thursday.

A new area code--though specialists have yet to determine what the number will be or where it will be located--will be introduced into portions of Central and Southern California by 1999.

Part of the existing 805 area code, which also covers Santa Barbara County and most of Kern and San Luis Obispo counties, will retain the original code and part will receive a new one.

A group composed of representatives from more than 30 communications companies is developing and evaluating options for the breakup, but no decisions have been made regarding who will keep the current 805 prefix, according to a Pacific Bell spokesman.

“The split will likely be an east-west split,” David A. Dickstein said. “But who keeps 805 is still up in the air.”

Most city officials contacted Thursday said there’s no way to avoid a split, so they’ll try to accept whatever plan is drawn up.

“We are running out of numbers. 805 stretches for a long way,” Ventura Mayor Jack Tingstrom said. “805 will split, and split again. It’s inevitable.

“It isn’t as bad as everyone thinks it will be,” he added.

In Moorpark, an area code change would not be a major problem for the city, said Don Reynolds, administrative services manager.

“If our area code changed, it’s just a matter of changing our letterheads and changing a few of our contacts,” Reynolds said. “The cost would be slightly over $2,500.

“911 to the Police Department is not going to change. And that’s the most important number we have,” Reynolds said.

But he sees a downside, too--more long-distance charges.

“I grew up in Thousand Oaks, which was 805. The people I grew up with were in Westlake and they were in 818, and that was a long-distance call. That was lousy,” he said.

Internet users would be slightly affected, but not in their wallets, said Fred Holmes, director of marketing for Ventura-based WestNet Communications, an Internet service provider. He’s anticipating a temporary headache as his customers dial the old number without realizing it has changed.

“It’s going to make our tech-support guys go crazy. It’s going to make our customers go crazy,” Holmes said. “I think anything that disturbs a person’s ability to do what they’ve done for a long time is a problem,” he said.

Kinko’s Inc., headquartered in Ventura, expects minor disruptions but also hopes to benefit from new stationery orders.

“It’s an inconvenience, but in a sense it’s a business opportunity for Kinko’s. For the corporate offices, we have to make changes,” spokeswoman Laura McCormick said. “But the reverse is, it can be beneficial to our business.”

City officials and business owners in northern Los Angeles County greeted the proposed change with mixed reactions.

“The 805 area code goes all the way to Santa Barbara and beyond . . . it seems kind of weird to me that we all have the same area code, so I guess it makes sense to split it,” said Mary Price, owner of Best Books in Lancaster. “But it will mean an expense for whoever has to change. For example, we’d have to buy new stationery. If it wasn’t for that, I don’t think I’d mind.”

In Santa Clarita, Mayor Clyde Smyth said he understands the need to create a new area code, but he hopes his city will not end up with two different ones.

“What I would not want to see happen is to see the Santa Clarita Valley split with a line running up the Interstate 5,” Smyth said. “There needs to be continuity in the community.”

Smyth said if his city does get a new area code, he hopes the numbers will be carefully picked and easy for residents and business people to use.

“You always want to keep what you have,” Smyth said. “Everybody is going to say, ‘Change the guy next to me. Everything is fine, just leave me alone.’ ”

Every area code can accommodate 7.9 million phone numbers. Currently, 805 serves about 5.1 million numbers, but it is growing at an annual rate of 800,000 numbers.

Under California law, public hearings are required before the industry submits a proposed plan to the California Public Utilities Commission.

Phone company officials say they try to do whatever will create the least disruption and inconvenience for consumers.

“Ventura County is the wild card,” PacBell’s Dickstein said. “There could be a situation where Ventura County is split because there are two different communities of interest. That’s why we truly urge all residents to attend the public meetings.”

Dickstein said one possibility would be for Santa Barbara, San Luis Obispo and coastal Ventura County to remain together, with Fillmore, Ojai, Thousand Oaks and other cities farther away from the coast breaking off to form an inland group that might include Palmdale and Bakersfield.

Three or four public meetings will be held before the end of June. Dates and locations will be announced this spring, according to Doug Hescox of Bell Communications Research, an organization that administers area codes in the United States.

“We will try to have the meetings close to the split lines,” Hescox said, “because [residents there] are the ones who are really impacted.”

PacBell will not release the cost of accommodating a split. Dickstein would only say that it runs into the millions of dollars.

The largest expense will be borne by businesses, which must update their databases, accounting and billing records, payrolls and customer files. In addition to updating their own records, they must contact all of their clients and affiliates to notify them of the change.

“The only winners with a split are the printing companies,” Dickstein said.

Technological change, rather than population growth, is the primary factor driving the explosive demand for phone lines. About 80% of new phone numbers are assigned to technologies other than traditional telephone service, according to Dickstein.

“Five years ago, who would have expected each home to have a fax machine and each home to be logged onto the Internet?” Dickstein said. “These days, even ordinary citizens have pagers and cell phones.”

Even automatic-teller machines at the gas station and the bank use telephone lines.

California has 13 area codes, but that number is expected to double within the next four years. These areas are expected to soon be split to accommodate growth: 310, 818 and 213 in the Los Angeles area, 619 in the San Diego area, 415 in the San Francisco Bay Area, 916 in Northern California, 510 in Contra Costa and Alameda counties, 714 in Orange County, 408 covering the Silicon Valley and Central Coast areas and 209 in the Fresno and Stockton areas.

MacGregor is a Times staff writer and Steepleton is a correspondent. Staff writer Julie Tamaki also contributed to this article.