Maine has taken a major step to preserve iconic 207 area code

By Christopher Burns, Bangor Daily News Staff

Maine has taken a major step to preserve its iconic 207 area code for years to come.

The Maine Public Utilities Commission on Nov. 26 approved the consolidation of 135 calling areas into one “rate center.”

Those 135 rate centers are served by Consolidated Communications Northern New England LLC, the largest of Maine’s remaining 24 landline service providers, also referred to as “incumbent local exchange carriers.” Those other 23 providers serve another 114 rate centers.

“This is by far the most significant step to date in our efforts to preserve Maine’s beloved area code,” the commission’s chair, Philip Bartlett, said. “Previous efforts by the Commission have resulted in an extension of eight years from the predicted exhaust date. This effort could potentially extend that date for decades.”

Presently just 37 percent of the 8 million available phone numbers within the 207 area code have been used. Yet, by the current forecast, the 207 area code was set to be exhausted by the second quarter of 2036.

That doesn’t mean, however, Maine will see a sudden influx of phones, both landline and cellular, over the next 12 years. Rather it has to do with a quirk of how phone numbers are assigned, according to a commission report.

Take the second three digits within a phone number, such as Bangor’s 990. This corresponds to an “exchange,” which is assigned to a rate center that often but not always conforms to a municipal boundary. Each exchange has approximately 10,000 phone numbers assigned to it, think the last four digits of a phone number.

One of the key factors driving the exhaustion of the 207 area code is unused exchanges.

Each 1,000-number block within an exchange is assigned to a particular provider, and once they use at least 100 numbers within that block, no other provider can use them, tying up those much-needed phone numbers.

By consolidating the 135 rate centers served by Consolidated Communications, regulators have opened up a large quantity of phone numbers for use elsewhere. For example, a commission report noted that this move would make available another 336,000 phone numbers for the Bangor rate center, not that the Queen City will likely need that many any time soon.

While this would be the largest such consolidation of its kind in the United States, other states like Colorado, Idaho, Iowa, Kansas, and Nebraska have used similar methods on a smaller scale to conserve phone numbers, according to the commission, which believes Maine’s effort could serve as a model for other states seeking to preserve dwindling phone number pools.

The utilities commission began closely monitoring the 207 area code’s lifespan in 2018 as the number of service providers in the state increased, placing more demands on the shrinking pool of numbers.

Rumors of the 207 area code’s exhaustion have become a regular occurrence in recent years. Its last call was forecasted, in 2015, to occur by early 2019. That was then extended to 2024, and again to 2025, 2027, 2029, 2032, 2033 and most recently 2036.

It wasn’t immediately clear how many years this move would add to the 207’s lifespan.

In 2021, the prospect of splitting Maine into two area codes prompted the state’s congressional delegation to call on the U.S. Federal Communications Commission to work with state regulators to save the 207, calling it a “cultural touchstone” and its preservation a “matter of efficiency.”

The utilities commission has investigated numbering practices of carriers like Verizon and T-Mobile to see whether they unnecessarily tie up large blocks of unused numbers within the 207 area code.

The commission has successfully worked with carriers to return hundreds of thousands of unused numbers to the 207 pool for future use.

Maine is just one of 11 states with just a single area code. But the problem facing the 207 is just a part of a larger dilemma facing the nation broadly. The U.S. could run out of area codes by mid-century, which could prompt the switch from 10-digit to 12-digit phone numbers. Such a change could cost an estimated $270 billion, according to the utilities commission.

Regulators continue to pursue other options to extend the lifespan of Maine’s 207 area code.