About two weeks since 10-digit dialing began in the Triangle, it has received mixed reviews from local businesses and emergency communication centers.
Some may have noticed you can no longer leave out the area code when calling someone in the 919 as well. Since March 30, all 919-ers must always dial all 10 digits of the phone number, no matter how local the outgoing call.
ATCOM Business Telecom Solutions, a local phone system provider, has more than 4,000 customers in the affected area. With offices in both Charlotte and Greensboro, ATCOM has experienced this type of change before when areas had to make the same kind of switch due to a shortage of available numbers in the same area code.
“We didn’t have nearly as many problems this time,” David Finch, CEO of ATCOM said.
In fact, he called it “miraculous” that out of all the multitude of customers, only two had actual issues because of the dialing change.
All ATCOM’s customers receive programming service in person. Because of this, it is possible for certain human errors to occur during programming for callout systems. For example, a service provider might not have programmed the number to dial back including the area code – something that wasn’t a problem until now.
To make sure medical providers could avoid any life-threatening issues caused by a possible human error, ATCOM prioritized its medical customers and checked their systems well in advance.
Nurses from North Raleigh Pediatrics and the Call-A-Nurse agency, which is used for after-hours medical calls, also said they have not experienced problems. In fact, Call-A-Nurse went so far as to insist they had the technology to handle the extra digits.
Yet, Barry Furey , director of the Raleigh-Wake Emergency Communications Center, says some initial problems caused by the new dialing have not yet been rectified. Mainly, people are dialing 911 instead of 919, so they are automatically being transferred to the emergency line.
“When you hear a nine and a one, it’s almost an automatic response to put another one after it – people are getting confused and frustrated,” Furey said. “It’s not as much an issue of our lines being blocked up, it’s more that our resources are being tapped. We had four and six times the amount of hang-ups on Saturday and Monday that we had to dispatch.”
While the center can usually get in touch with a caller by dialing back, they have to send an officer out to investigate about 20 percent of the time. Monday, one officer was dispatched every seven minutes, directly because of the dialing change confusion.
“When our operators are taking calls by frustrated people who don’t understand why they have to dial an area code to call their neighbor, they’re not able to answer the next call that could be an actual emergency,” Furey said. “The same can be said for the officers who are out investigating hang-ups.”
Furey is incredibly concerned about this issue. He says this was a problem they expected, but the center had hoped this time they might be wrong.
Jim Soukup , however, has not had the same problem at the Durham Emergency Communication Center. As director, he feels any issues caused the first few days have settled down.
“We’re in good shape, we aren’t experiencing much of an inconvenience because of the dialing changes,” Soukup said.
While Durham is free from worry, N.C . State students should take the necessary precautions when dialing so as not to clog the Raleigh-Wake system.