Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: WEDNESDAY, September 13, 1995                   TAG: 9509130013
SECTION: BUSINESS                    PAGE: B-8   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: MEGAN SCHNABEL
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

THE NUMBER'S UP FOR 800 LINES, SO GET READY FOR 888

And she handed you a graham cracker and assured you that such a thing never could happen - there would always be enough numbers.

Apparently, even good ol' Mom didn't foresee what was ahead.

We've just about run out of toll-free telephone numbers, those beginning with the 800 prefix instead of an area code. True, it's not nearly as serious as running out of ordinary numbers, but it's going to cause plenty of problems just the same.

There are only 7.6 million possible 800 numbers and a whole lot more businesses and individuals who want them. Rather than giving up on the whole idea of toll-free calling, the telecommunications industry has decided to choose another prefix as a toll-free designation: 888.

The FCC, which has been helping the industry out of this fix, says the new numbers will be available March 1. But both AT&T and MCI are subscribing to the old "the earlier, the better" philosophy of public relations to spare customers any surprises. AT&T took its show on the road in midsummer, offering presentations at business forums and radio talk shows. MCI hasn't waged a full-scale attack yet, but has been talking to its largest business customers to tell them what the change will mean for their toll-free service.

Consumers will begin seeing the promotions as early as this month.

As nearsighted as it seems now, no one really anticipated this problem - or at least that it would happen so soon. AT&T first offered 800 service in 1967, and for the first 26 years the telecommunications industry took care of its own 800 number assignments with no problems.

But by June 1995, the allocation of 800 numbers had jumped from 30,000 a week to more than 100,000 a week, says Susan Sallet at the FCC's Common Carrier Bureau. No one can say for sure what was behind the sudden jump - blame has been placed on the increasing popularity of pagers and cellular phones and on the ready availability of personal toll-free numbers - but it was clear that the nation would run out of 800 numbers within a few months if demand continued at that rate.

Through a rationing program, the FCC has helped the telecommunications industry bring the allocation rate back to about 30,000 a week. But the rationing has left some phone customers waiting in line for 800 numbers that they could have had immediately just months ago.

It's the vanity 800 numbers - like 1-800-FLOWERS or 1-800-CALL ATT - that will present the biggest problem when the 888 prefix is introduced. The companies that use these numbers have invested a lot of time and energy - and promotional money - in their numbers, Sallet said. What happens to the florist's corporate identity if a competitor lands the 888 equivalent of 1-800-FLOWERS?

Majestic Mortgage Corp. of Roanoke got its vanity number - 1-800-414-HOME - when it opened its office here in May. David Griffith, the company's marketing director, said having to share the number with an 888 competitor wouldn't be the end of the world, but it wouldn't make the people at Majestic very happy, either.

"The number is part of the identity of Majestic Mortgage," Griffith said. "It's a powerful tool. People relate to us through that number."

The committee in charge of numbering could just go ahead and give these companies 888 duplicates of their vanity 800 numbers, but that would defeat the purpose of the new prefix - to open up new toll-free numbers.

And then there are questions about misdirected calls - like who's going to pay for them. Toll-free calls are complimentary only to the caller, not to the party who answers. So if someone tries to call the company at 1-888-FLOWERS but mistakenly uses the more familiar 800 code, which company pays for the call?

If we ever run out of 888 numbers - which doesn't sound all that unlikely anymore, considering the current demand - toll-free numbering will continue with 877, then 866 and so on, down to 822.

For phone companies, the switch is going to be neither fast nor cheap. Local phone companies and national carriers will have to reprogram their software to recognize 888-numbers as toll-free, just as switchboards have to be reconfigured when new area codes are introduced for general long-distance phoning.

Of course, those of us living in Southwest ("Oh, sure, just take away our area code, why don't you") Virginia will be well equipped to deal with all the confusion.