COLUMBIA, S.C. — Beaufort and Jasper counties have outgrown their area code.
Those counties and a handful of others up the coastline will be adding an 854 area code to the existing 843. It’s a process that has been done so much across the country that state officials anticipate a smooth roll out.
Relatively speaking.
“Glitches happen, so it’s not guaranteed, but that’s the intention,” said Chris Rozycki, director of telecommunications for the S.C. Office of Regulatory Staff.
Officials know some people will want to know why South Carolina didn’t simply cut the 843 service area in half, allowing one side keep their phone numbers and forcing the other side to change to the new area code.
“There are going to be a couple complainers who say, ‘Why didn’t you do this?’” said Rozycki.
“And the answer is they tried that in other places. I can guarantee you it did not go well.”
The coastal counties are the first in the state to add a new area code as a solution to a growing scarcity of numbers for the existing one. Nationally, the process has been taking place for at least 15 years, starting with large metropolitan areas, said Rozycki.
In mid-March, coastal South Carolina residents will have six months, during which they may continue to dial local numbers without an area code but are encouraged to dial 10 digits. That period is designed to act as training time ahead of Sept. 19, when callers will be required to dial 10 digits to place calls.
The first batch of 854
telephone numbers will be given out one month later to new residents and businesses. The new 854 numbers will serve the same geographic area currently served by area code 843.
On Friday, the North American Numbering Plan Administration released a planning letter that adjusted the timeline slightly for providers.
The letter listed service providers, including CenturyLink, AT&T, Home Telecom, Frontier Communications, Sprint, T‐Mobile USA, Verizon Wireless and others.
Jim McDaniel, program manager for the Office of Regulatory Staff, said he doesn’t anticipate the process to correlate to higher phone bills.
“Certainly there’s a cost associated with doing this, and that is generally part of the normal modification of the network,” he said. “There’s no specific expense to the consumers … . It’s a cost of doing business.”
Large businesses will be able to add new numbers and keep the 843 area code, due to an allocation of numbers set aside to prevent companies from having a mix of area codes.
“Potentially, as people move away, they may free up 843 numbers,” Rozycki said. “But it’s mostly for businesses and government, which have a large pool of numbers that they want to keep aggregated under one area code.”