| Dial "M" for Morons |
3 February 2003
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Improving Phone Choice Through Inconvenience
The power that be have visited a stupidity on New York City's telephone users that tests the limits of double-think. Just as the US Army has to destroy the village to save the village, the FCC has decided that it must inconvenience the consumer to help the consumer. Every phone call in the city now requires 11 digits to be completed instead of the 7 needed just last week in order to serve consumers better.
The reason for this is to provide local carriers with a more level playing field. It seems that Verizon had some sort of unfair advantage because it inherited the "traditional" area codes of 212 and 718 during deregulation. Others must make do with 646 and 347. The solution provided by the FCC bureaucrats in Washington (area code 202 and so unaffected) was to require the consumer to reprogram all computer modems, speed dialers, and so on. Failure to do so results in the call not going through.
Deregulation has largely been a success in this field, but this commitment to competition goes beyond all reason. New York City officials are, in part, at fault thanks to their unwillingness to learn from other cities. Paris solved this problem a long time ago with a far more elegant solution -- 8-digit phone numbers. Everyone keeps the same area code, and the additional digit expands the quantity of phone numbers available by about 90 million.
But not in New York. A new area code provides fewer than 10 million 7-digit numbers, and in a city of 8 million or so residents, it is inadequate. It's a lose-lose situation, and it won't lower a single phone bill. More area codes will be needed before the decade ends.