GATINEAU — Having been notified last week by the Canadian Numbering Administrator (CNA) that the projected exhaust date (PED) for phone numbers in the 343/613 area code has advanced by 16 months, the CRTC has authorized the CNA to activate what’s called a jeopardy condition plan to deal with the problem.
The 343/613 area codes cover the Ottawa area and eastern Ontario, including the cities of Kingston, Belleville, Brockville, Pembroke, Bancroft and Cornwall. (The 343 area code was added to the 613 region almost 11 years ago, in May 2010.)
The CNA’s January 2021 Relief-Numbering Resource Utilization Forecast (R-NRUF) shows that the PED for the 343/613 area codes has advanced from February 2024 to October 2022, which is 20 months from now.
Although relief planning is currently underway to introduce a new area code (753) in the region, a date for implementing the new area code has not been determined yet and the relief implementation plan has not been completed.
In a letter sent to the Commission on February 22, the CNA recommends jeopardy condition measures should be put in place, requiring the CNA to:
- enforce the Canadian NPA Relief Planning Guideline, Appendix F – Jeopardy Contingency Plan (JCP);
- freeze central office code assignments per the January 2021 R-NRUF submissions; and
- conduct area code complex 343/613 Jeopardy-Numbering Resource Utilization Forecasts (J-NRUFs) at the area code level of detail.
In a letter sent to CNA program manager Kelly Walsh on March 1, 2021, the Commission’s Michel Murray, director of dispute resolution and regulatory implementation for the telecommunications sector, agreed with the CNA.
Cartt.ca reached out to Walsh to ask why numbers in the 343/613 area code region are being exhausted more quickly than expected.
In an email response, Walsh explained the CNA aggregates forecasting data provided by telephone service providers (TSPs) and then applies an approved method of predicting exhaust dates. Generally speaking, two things driving number usage lately are TSPs expanding service in a given area (which requires a central office code for each exchange area covering the region the TSP wants to expand into) and TSPs using geographic area code numbering resources for machine-to-machine services that could otherwise use a non-geographic numbering resource.
“Covid may have played a slight role in 343/613 as we understand that the federal government and possibly many large businesses required many extra mobile devices that would otherwise not have been required, however we don’t know the specific impact that it had,” wrote Walsh.
In addition, something many people may not consider, the standard list of items that continue to use resources include not just cell phones and home phones, but also faxes, tablets with LTE internet, VoIP applications, built-in automotive emergency and phone services, traffic lights, parking meters, vending machines, alarm systems and other items which make up the Internet of Things.
This issue won’t be confined to the Ottawa region. “This discussion pretty much applies to most other area code complexes with a few exceptions,” Walsh added.
CRTC spokesperson Patricia Valladao responded to Cartt.ca’s enquiry and said: “It is quite normal for carriers to change their forecasts as they are a reflection on their business and marketing plans which can drive the need for telephone numbers for their services. These changes then drive a change in the projected exhaust dates for area codes or grouping of area codes (termed area code complexes) as multiple area codes now serve the same geographical area…We do not have specific information on what drives each carrier’s forecasts, but generally IoT services are one of the larger drivers of telephone number usage these days.”
We here at Cartt.ca wonder how quickly this challenge will accelerate as 5G is more widely deployed, bringing even more IoT devices on stream which need phone number.
