New report argues area code splits are unnecessary if carriers quit wasting numbers.
A new report indicates that carrier mismanagement of numbers, not voracious user appetite for new voice and data lines, is to blame for repeated area code splits. Selwyn said the 195 area codes now assigned in the U.S. provide a capacity of more than 1.5 billion numbers - many more than the country needs. The Ad Hoc Telecommunications Users Committee and the International Communications Association user groups commissioned Selwyn's report. Both groups called on local carriers and the Federal Communications Commission to revisit their numbering policies. A rating area is a small community used to fix a geographic location in order to calculate precise distances between any two points.