After a successful number pooling trial in Illinois, Focal Communications fancied moving the show to California, but incumbents Pacific Bell and GTE have refused to play any part in the production.

In mid-November, the California Public Utilities Commission requested comments and suggestions from industry leaders concerning how to increase the available numbers in the state. California has 24 area codes-the highest numberof any state-yet 20 of the area codes are near depletion. A Pacific Bell spokeswoman acknowledged the state's problem, but she said a voluntary number pooling trial was premature. "The FCC is developing national standards for number pooling, and we're cooperating with the California PUC, but it's too soon to be involved in a trial."

The national standards being developed by the FCC are akin to those used in the Illinois pooling trial currently underway. The Illinois project has been in process since 1997. In the Chicago area, carriers agreed to a voluntary number pooling in which they returned unused blocks of 1000 numbers that can then be used by other providers.

Reconfiguring carriers' service control points for these changes is tricky, though. The Midwest Region Number Portability Administration used local number portability techniques to allow 1000-number blocks to be routed correctly. The current system standard requires 10,000-number blocks for routing purposes.

"Deploying a number pool is not a trivial undertaking," said Mark Foster, an independent consultant. However, if California chose to do a number pooling trial, it would need to follow Chicago's lead. "The Chicago approach could be turned on in another region," said Foster, "and it could be done in less than the predicted 10 to 19 months."

Several software companies such as Evolving Systems also are developing local number portability applications for carriers faced with number pooling. "Most of the carriers' systems will have to be updated to reflect the smaller blocks of numbers," said George Hallenbeck, president and CEO of Evolving Systems. "Incumbent carriers will have to spend a big hunk of change, but there's also a great deal of costs in area code splits."

One alternative to splitting area codes proposed by Michael Friedl, president of DialRight Software, is adding another digit. "There's a sense that companies are stockpiling numbers. They're not hoarding-that's just the technology that is currently in use. Moving to 1000 blocks won't change the demand. It's just a stopgap measure, but if they add a digit at the exchange level, it will increase the amount by a factor of 10."

Meanwhile, Focal claims the regional Bell operating companies are stonewalling. "The process is not as difficult as it would have been five years ago," said Bob Taylor, Focal's CEO. "It's not a matter of ability; it's a matter of desire. They don't desire to do this."