NORTH COUNTY —
Move over 619, 760 and 858. There’s a new area code in the San Diego region and its name is 442.
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The code was actually created four years ago and covers the same region as 760, but until March — when the supply of 760 numbers finally ran dry — phone companies weren’t using 442 as heavily. That’s about to change.
“You’re going to see a steady rise in 442 numbers in the coming months,” said Joe Cocke, a senior area code planner for the North American Numbering Plan Administration. “Phone companies have been given 80,000 numbers in the 442 this year.”
People already assigned the 442 area code say they often get confused looks when giving out their phone numbers.
“They say, ‘Where are you from, Kansas?’ ” said Zenda Feadler, one of the early crop of consumers to get a 442 number. She’s had hers since 2011.
Cocke said such confusion will die down as more people and businesses are assigned numbers in the 442 code, which includes much of North County.
He said part of the confusion might stem from 442 being the San Diego region’s first “overlay” code, where one geographic area gets covered by two different area codes.
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When the 760 area code was added in 1997, and when 858 was added in 1999, they were geographic splits from the 619 area code. In an overlay, everyone in the region keeps their number in the existing area code and new customers get assigned numbers in the new area code.
The 442 was created in 2009 because federal telecommunications officials decided the 760, which also includes parts of Riverside and Imperial counties, was running dangerously short on phone numbers.
But it wasn’t until March that the final 50,000 phone numbers available in 760 were given to phone companies, Cocke said.
Feadler, the woman with the 442 number, said she’s suffered through many minor hassles since she got her new number.
“When I call a doctor’s office or for a pizza delivery, they think I’m calling from long distance because no one knows about the 442,” she said.
Marshall Davis, an Escondido resident with a 442 number, said he’s encountered similar problems.
“People find it kind of strange,” he said.
But Davis said his unusual phone number has become an amusing topic of conversation with some people. And he said nearly everyone forgets about his weird number quickly because they typically call him by selecting his name in their cellphone instead of punching in digits.
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The largest customer assigned the new code has been 11-story Palomar Medical Center, which opened in western Escondido in the summer of 2012.
All 5,000 numbers assigned to the hospital begin with 442, forcing people to dial the unfamiliar code when trying to call patients, doctors and other staff members. The hospital chose the 442 code because it was the only way to have all of its seven-digit numbers start with the same three-number prefix, 281.
“When we first started, there was a bit of a learning curve,” hospital spokeswoman Bobette Brown said Thursday. “We still get a lot of questions about where the area code is from. People are used to there being three area codes in San Diego.”
People will become steadily more comfortable with the 442, said Cocke, the federal area code official.
He said overlays have become more common in recent years because residents and businesses generally prefer them to geographic splits. There have been more than 50 overlays created in 20 states, Cooke said.
Those include four other overlays in California: 657 was added to the 714 in Orange County, 424 was added to the 310 in Los Angeles County, 747 was added to the 818 in San Bernardino County and 669 was added to the 408 in the San Jose area.
The 442 was initially proposed as a geographic split from 760. State officials wanted to allow desert communities near Palm Springs to keep 760 and force North County to switch to 442. But a public backlash in North County prompted the switch to an overlay.
San Diego has experienced several previous area code changes. The entire region switched from the 213 area code to the 714 code in 1951, when the Los Angeles area began running out of numbers. And when 714 began running out of numbers, the region was switched to 619.
In 1997, most of North County was split from the rest of San Diego and given the 760 area code. And in 1999, the middle of the county, from Poway to La Jolla and Del Mar, was split off and given the 858 area code.
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