North Dakota officials are seeking permission from federal regulators to free up potentially millions of unused phone numbers and keep the state under one area code.
The state is projected to run out of phone numbers under the 701 area code in 2026. Many North Dakotans are accustomed to seven-digit dialing in which they omit the area code when calling locally, and state officials anticipate residents might find a switch to 10-digit dialing with a second area code cumbersome.
Two other states, New Hampshire and Maine, have petitioned the Federal Communications Commission to allow them more leniency in assigning phone numbers to service areas. North Dakota's Public Service Commission voted last week to join them.
When a phone company wants to expand to a new part of the state, it must request a block of numbers to serve that area. The North American Numbering Plan Administrator, authorized by the FCC, works with state officials to assign the block.
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Each block must contain at least 1,000 phone numbers. Sometimes, the service area the block is assigned to is a small town where just a few dozen or few hundred of those numbers are needed. The remaining numbers within the block cannot be repurposed to another service area. Thus, they sit unused.
Such a scenario exists in many parts of North Dakota. The state encompasses nearly 300 service areas, and 88% of them use less than 20% of the phone numbers assigned to them, Commissioner Randy Christmann said.
“That is pushing toward exhaustion,” he said.
North Dakota plans to join the FCC case started by the states in New England. All are rural states with just one area code.
They want the federal government to lift the 1,000-number minimum in each block so that fewer numbers could be assigned to a service area. Some phone companies have indicated a willingness to turn back unused phone numbers, and millions of numbers are tied up under existing rules, Christmann said.
“This provides a chance for these three states with a goal of preserving a single area code to show this will work,” he said.
If the FCC is amenable to the idea and the process works smoothly in the states that petitioned for the change, the federal government could potentially lift the limit for all states, he said. That might allow the rest of the United States to preserve 10-digit dialing well into the future, according to Christmann. The nation as a whole could run out of 10-digit phone numbers within the next couple of decades, he said.
This is the second time in recent years the PSC has taken action to preserve seven-digit dialing.
The commission has worked with several phone companies to change about 30 numbers that began with the digits 988 after the area code. The state pushed for companies to free up those digits because of a change to the national suicide hotline number. Previously, a person seeking to call for help had to dial a 10-digit number, but by next summer they will simply need to dial 988.
The PSC managed to free up all 988 numbers in the state. The alternative was requiring everyone in North Dakota to dial the 701 area code any time they sought to make an in-state call.