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Those who make calls to San Jose and other Santa Clara County numbers in the 408 Area Code may soon need to reprogram their cell phones to 669 instead.
Officials recently started talking about introducing the new area code, 669, for Santa Clara County residents and businesses because of a depleting number of available phone numbers that use area code 408, Katherine Morehouse, a CPUC analyst, said Monday. Some people could be forced to change phone numbers, according to the California Public Utilities Commission.
“We’ve began discussing a new area code because it takes about a year to implement one,” Morehouse said.
The CPUC began working in December with the North American Numbering Plan Administrator, or NANPA, an international numbering plan for the U.S., Canada and several countries in the Caribbean. The two organizations met with telephone service providers to discuss the best way of implementing a new area code.
One option providers have is an overlay, which means people will be allowed to keep their phone numbers with the 408 area code, and new phone numbers will have the 669 area code, Morehouse said.
“Not all the new numbers in an overlay would have the new area code, but most of them would,” she said.
In the second option, known as a split, providers perhaps will take hundreds or more preexisting phone numbers and reassign them to the new 669 area code.
The CPUC has scheduled five meetings on the topic, and four of the meetings are meant to gather feedback from the public. The first meeting will be in the San Jose City Hall’s council chambers at 2 p.m. on March 16. The meeting, which is titled a local jurisdiction meeting, will be for a discussion among officials about the new area code, but the public is invited to attend, Morehouse said.
A second meeting will be held in the same place in San Jose City Hall on the same day at 7 p.m., and will be intended for officials to hear public comment.
Anyone interested in learning more about the 408 area code and its current evolution with the proposed 669 area code can visit www.cpuc.ca.gov/408areacode.
Bay City News contributed to this story.
Bay City News contributed to this story.
