A new battlefield: Lockheed Martin takes over contentious numbering and area code system

Lockheed Martin-a company better known for fighter jets than phone numbers-will administer area codes for the United States, Canada and 19 Caribbean islands under a recently completed transition plan. Overseeing the project is Ron Conners, a software engineer who's been fascinated with numbers all his life.

Conners, 57, is director of the North American Numbering Plan Administration at Lockheed Martin IMS. Before he joined the defense giant last September, Conners had the same responsibilities at Bellcore, which had been the NANPA administrator since AT&T's breakup in 1984.

"After divestiture, things became very contentious," Conners says from his office, about four blocks from the FCC's headquarters. "Bellcore was the closest thing there was to a neutral entity. The FCC wanted the numbering plan to be in the hands of a company that had no interest in the outcome of telecom decisions, somebody who wasn't in the business. We're mainly in aircraft and defense. That qualifies us as a neutral third party."

Bellcore originally wanted out of NANPA because its shared ownership by the seven Bell regional holding companies always had been perceived as a conflict of interest. But by the time the FCC decided to find another administrator, Bellcore already was under new ownership-Science Applications International Corp. had bought it a few months earlier-and conflict of interest was no longer an issue. To remain as numbering plan administrator, however, it now would have to compete against three other companies also interested in the lucrative job: Lockheed, Mitretek and CCMI.

A new administrator To help it decide, the FCC looked to the North American Numbering Council, a 32-member federal advisory body the FCC established in October 1996 to represent all industry sectors, including consumers and state regulators.

"One of the first jobs the NANC was given by the FCC was to recommend a successor to Bellcore," says NANC Chairman Alan C. Hasselwander, a retired CEO of Frontier Corp. "We put that out to bid, then recommended that the new NANPA be Lockheed Martin."

"Our criteria looked at both price and capability," says Hasselwander. "Two vendors were very close-Mitretek and Lockheed. Both of them were considered to be capable, but Lockheed's price was significantly lower than Mitretek's,"

Lockheed's contract with the FCC is worth $25 million over five years, Conners says. Lockheed Martin IMS, headquartered in Teaneck, N.J., already provides a host of non-defense-related data processing services to state and local governments, including child support services, parking ticket processing and electronic toll collection.

One of about 50 operating divisions within the parent firm, Lockheed Martin IMS is a leading provider of sole-source, third-party services to the telecom industry. Through the nation's first-of-its-kind Number Portability Administration Center in Chicago, the company will provide various carriers with local number portability, which initially lets customers keep their telephone numbers if they switch to a new service provider. For five years, Lockheed also administered the 800-number toll-free database for the telecom industry.

In addition to area codes, Lockheed also has taken over administering several lesser known numbering resources from Bellcore. These include the PCS or 500-NXX codes; 900-NXX codes; the international inbound 456 codes; N11 codes, such as 911 and 411; 800-855-XXXX line numbers for the hearing-impaired; and carrier identification codes, vertical service codes and automatic number identification information integers.

In January, Lockheed moved NANPA operations to Washington, and on Feb. 20, it completed a three-month transition that consolidated the transfer of all NANPA responsibilities from Bellcore to Lockheed Martin IMS.

"It's a unique marketplace for us," says Conners, who moved from Bellcore to Lockheed in anticipation of the defense contractor winning the NANPA contract. "At Bellcore, we really didn't set policy," he says. "The basic decisions by a state or city are local decisions. They'd submit a relief plan to us. If that was consistent with industry guidelines and FCC directives, then we would make that area code assignment."

Business booms Lockheed's new role is significantly more complicated than Bellcore's was, Conners says.

"We're not only doing what Bellcore did, but we're also taking over central office code administration and all the coordination of meetings for doing relief planning across the country," he says. "Even Bellcore was happy to get out of this because it is so complicated."

In a prepared statement, Bellcore CEO Sanjiv Ahuja says, "Bellcore is proud of its record of administering the [NANP] during a period of unprecedented growth in telecommunications-and in demand for telephone numbers and area codes. We wish Lockheed Martin IMS success as they take on this new challenge, and we pledge our support for a smooth transition."

To handle its increased workload, Lockheed will devote 31 full-time employees to area code administration, compared with four or five employees at Bellcore.

The NANP was devised by the former Bell System in 1947 to provide enough telephone numbers for an expected boom in demand for telephone service.

That year, 86 codes were assigned, and customers began using them in Englewood, N.J., in 1951 to dial long-distance calls.

The current plan for NANP relief goes back to the 1960s when telecom engineers at AT&T realized that the nation would eventually run out of codes in the old format. As a result, the new format, allowing the middle digit of a code to be two through nine, was designed. In the interim, the requirement that local prefixes not have a zero or one as a middle digit was gradually scrapped-beginning in Los Angeles in 1971.

"That extended the life of busier area codes and kept the supply going until 1995 when we took the major step of converting area codes into the new format," says Conners.

Of 792 codes available, 247 currently have been assigned-92 of them since the new format began on Jan. 15, 1995, with the inauguration of the 334 code in southern Alabama, and the 360 code in eastern Washington.

In the next year, Conners anticipates about 30 new area code splits or overlays. At an average seven meetings per relief activity, that means Lockheed will have to facilitate 210 public meetings across the United States and Canada-meetings involving consumers, businesses, phone companies, RHCs and state public service commissions.

California already has 19 area codes-the most of any state-and will need to add 13 by the end of 2000 to keep pace, says Doug Hescox, who oversees area code administration for California and Nevada.

"The rising demand for additional phone numbers is caused by the increased use of fax machines, pagers, cellular phones, modems for Internet access and other high-tech equipment such as [automated teller machines] and pay-point services, all of which require phone lines," he says.

That explosive growth is not confined to huge metropolitan areas such as Los Angeles, San Francisco or Chicago.Three months after adding its fourth area code, North Carolina added two more new codes in March, making the state the ninth in the country with six or more area codes. North Carolina's 252 and 828 codes were activated March 22 in areas now served by 704 and 919. Last December, the state's Triad region received the 336 code to extend the life of the 910 code.

"During the past several years, North Carolina has enjoyed tremendous economic growth in all areas of the state," says J. Billie Ray, state president of BellSouth. "That has created the need to add four new area codes in only four years."

In Pennsylvania, the state's public utility commission recently approved a split of the 717 code serving the Harrisburg/

York/Scranton area and the possible creation of a new area code that would overlay the 215 and 610 codes in southeastern Pennsylvania.

At the same time, the commission reiterated its commitment to implementing a more efficient allocation system to significantly delay the creation of additional area codes. The PUC says its actions "are necessary to avoid additional shortages of exchange codes."

Implementing unpopular policy Area code splits are almost always unpopular, especially when they divide a big metropolitan area into two, three or even four codes. The only alternative-an overlay that lets customers keep their existing codes but assigns a new code to customers signing up after a certain date-is also controversial. Some telcos say it discriminates against new businesses because the new code allows customers to determine which companies are well established and which haven't been in business long. Overlays also require 10-digit dialing for people used to dialing seven digits.

"We don't have any enforcement policy," says Conners. "We find ourselves in a very delicate situation, although here at Lockheed we have more teeth, since some FCC regulations have been codified.

"It's not a job where you can please everybody. The FCC says that when you have an overlay, you must have 10-digit dialing for competitive reasons, although it's not technically necessary," he says. "I hope 10-digit dialing will [eventually] be required nationwide. It would be a great service to the public if we had uniform dialing arrangements throughout the country."

The first jurisdiction to implement statewide 10-digit dialing was Maryland, which is getting two new codes, 240 and 443, to work concurrently with the existing 301 and 410 codes. Overlay codes have also been approved for Atlanta (678), the Tampa/St. Petersburg area (727) and Denver (720).

New York has a proposed 646 overlay for Manhattan's 212, although the state's public service commission has petitioned the FCC to waive the 10-digit dialing requirement, arguing that "in that particular jurisdiction, it would not be a competitive issue."

The numbering plan transition moved the assignment of CO codes, or telephone prefixes, from the RHCs and GTE to Lockheed.

"A lot of these people coming in for numbers don't feel comfortable giving their data to the [RHCs], which are currently the administrators of prefixes," says Conners.

"We're running out of area codes because we're running out of prefixes. It's really nobody's fault," Conners says. "There are a lot of new services. I alone have seven or eight numbers. When I was a kid in Kansas, we had only one phone, and we were lucky to have it."

Each area code yields about 7.5 million telephone numbers. Shortages are caused in large part by the telecom industry's requirement to use one exchange code per rate center for each carrier. A wireless carrier or a new carrier competing with the local phone company therefore receives the full block of 10,000 numbers even if it needs only a few. Numbers not given to customers go unused but cannot be returned for use by other carriers.

Since early 1997, Bell Atlantic has been helping to lead an industry panel charged with developing the technology and standards for number pooling. This new capability will let carriers obtain phone numbers in blocks of 1000 instead of 10,000 (see story on page 36). However, industry experts doubt pooling will be available before the middle of 1999.

"When number pooling becomes available, it will help stretch out the supply of phone numbers," says Thomas DeSisto, executive director of regulatory issues for Bell Atlantic-Massachusetts, which added two area codes in the last six months. "There has been a gold rush for new exchange codes. The code administrator has told Bell Atlantic and all Massachusetts carriers that, based on the volume of recent requests, immediate conservation of telephone exchange codes is needed."

Based on current growth rates, the United States will eventually run out of phone numbers, even with the new area code format and number pooling. Lockheed already has given some thought to the idea of enlarging local phone numbers from seven digits to eight-a step that has been taken in France, Germany, Japan and Sao Paulo, Brazil.

But Hasselwander of the NANC says that's something the council would like to avoid for a long time. "To do that would be very expensive, something on the order of the year 2000 problem."

Just in case, however, two blocks of reserve codes-37X and 96X-have been set aside to allow two numbering systems to operate in parallel while phone numbers are converted from 10 digits (including the area code) to 12 digits or more.

"The 10-digit format can last until 2025 or beyond," says Conners. "If we're really lucky, we can make it last until the middle of the next century."

At first glance, it seems like the kind of computer room you might find in any company headquarters-complete with requisite air conditioning and backup power units the size of a kitchen appliance. Then you notice the four virtually identical stacks of Stratus fault-tolerant computers and realize that each stack corresponds with an entire Bell company region. And as you squint at the bank of wiring cabinets in the center of the room, you realize that any major U.S. telephone company not already connected there will be soon.

It's one of Lockheed Martin's twin number portability administration centers (see figure). This one, in Chicago, backs up a redundant facility in Tarrytown, N.Y.

Jeffrey E. Ganek, senior vice president and managing director for communications industry services for Lockheed Martin, likens the center's role in the telecom industry to that of the roundhouse in the railroad industry-a neutral ground on which multiple carriers can come together. Because Lockheed Martin is not a carrier, says Ganek, "we don't have an agenda-and because we don't have an agenda, we've been very effective."

Although local number portability was government-mandated, industry groups have driven its implementation. Seven limited liability corporations, each including an RHC and key competitors, organized themselves in each of the original Bell territories.

Last year, four limited liability corporations selected Lockheed Martin to be their administrator. The other three selected Perot Systems, but in February, joined the Lockheed Martin camp when Perot was unable to deliver on schedule. Databases for the those three regions-corresponding with the territories of BellSouth, U S West and the original Pacific Bell-are being added to the original four.

Initially, carriers envisioned separate administration centers for each region, but they eventually agreed that a single center would be more efficient, Ganek says.

Carriers use their service order administration systems to input information about new customers who want to keep their phone numbers. The system sends that information to the number portability administration center, using a variety of connection methods. A large carrier might have multiple T-1 lines into the center, while a smaller carrier might enter the information through an Internet interface or even phone it in to a Lockheed Martin representative.

Facilities-based telcos must have the capability to route phone calls to the correct carrier based on the dialed phone number. That means those telcos can either maintain their own database of ported numbers or contract with another carrier to handle that function for them. As number portability administrator, Lockheed Martin is responsible for updating all participating carriers' databases. This is achieved through a connection from the center to each carrier's service management system over the same type of physical links that connect the service order administration systems.

"We have a high-speed transaction system interfacing with every telephone company in America," says Ganek, adding that this capability ultimately could be used to support functions other than local number portability.

He cites the example of number pooling, a task Lockheed Martin is tackling through its joint roles as number portability administrator and North American Numbering Plan administrator. Carriers have asked the administrator to investigate alternatives to assigning local numbers to carriers in blocks of 10,000 per carrier per rate center, says Ganek. If all carriers serving a single rate center could draw from the same block of independently administered numbers, those numbers could be used more efficiently, and the dizzying pace of new area code assignments most likely could be slowed.

"There will always be a role for a neutral third party-a roundhouse or a Switzerland," says Ganek.