Jeff Colbourne
Northern News Services

NNSL (May 20/98) - Some southerners are still having trouble making calls to the North, according to NorthwesTel. The problem is the new 867 area code, which has been in effect since last October.

"Some ... non-NorthwesTel customers or contacts are having trouble dialing in," said Don Sian, area-code project leader with NorthwesTel last week.

"And as a matter of course, what we're advising our customers to do is to speak with their client or their personal contact and advise them to phone 611, the trouble-reporting number in the area, from where they're calling."

Yellowknifer first heard about the trouble with 867 when Barry Taylor, owner of Arctic Safaris, an outfitting company, reported that some of his old customers and perhaps many new customers could not get through to him.

Some telephone networks in the South and abroad had not updated their systems to recognize 867 numbers.

Sian explained that some telephone companies probably have not completed programming to allow 867 to dial through or, if it is a business, some of the older telephone systems may not allow it to happen.

"The trouble is not with the NorthwesTel switching equipment. Our end is operating 100 per cent in terms of the new area code," said Sian.

"Our permissive dialing period ended April 26 and at that particular point we worked hard in recording calling statistics within our territory and throughout the Yukon, NWT and Nunavut regions. We were getting call completions with the new area code at 95 per cent."

NorthwesTel believes its public relations campaign with their customers in the North was successful.

An information letter was send out from Bell Canada a year in advance of the 867 activation and it went out to all telephone companies in North America and others around the globe.

"It's the same for an area-code change in NorthwesTel's district or if it was a new area code in the Caribbean or elsewhere. It's the individual companies responsibility to make the appropriate changes to their switching equipment to allow their customers to be connected to the world," said Sian.

NorthwesTel said it is not a problem that's unique to NorthwesTel, but one that became more apparent as new area-code numbering configurations were introduced.

BCTel and Bell in Toronto ran into similar problems when they introduced new area codes a couple of years ago.

Area codes used to use only 0s or 1s for middle digits but in the last few years telephone companies have been running out of numbers that have those combinations.

The North American Numbering Plan Association, the group that oversees and allocates area codes, was forced recently to introduce area codes that have other middle digits.

Telephone companies were then forced to update their software to allow the new codes.