Early October of last year, The California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) approved an all-services overlay that added a new 669 area code to the same geographic region as the existing 408 area code.

    The change affected residents of Santa Clara County and parts of Alameda and Santa Cruz counties. CPUC predicted that if the South Bay did not add another area code, the region would run out of new phone numbers by January.

    The two options were a “split,” where the original region would be divided into two sections and one section would change area codes, or an “overlay,” where an additional area code would be added to the single region. Weighing the possible effects of either decision, CPUC unreasonably proceeded the latter, leaving consumers baffled by the decision.

The downside is that all residents in the 408 region now have to dial 408 before making a call to anyone else in the same region.

Since numbers with the 408 area code still remained when the decision for an overlay was made, the change was not enforced until Oct. 20, a year later; however, many residents of the region were unaware of the change until it was enforced.

The overlay is an inconvenient reaction to the situation, which could have been more efficiently solved with a split.

Because prior to the change consumers rarely input the area code before making a call, having only half of the region start using a different code (such as 669) wouldn’t have been much worse than the overlay. But at least with a split, many residents remain unaffected.

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has been done before, 40 years ago, when the region was still part of the 415 area code and was split into the 408 and 415 area codes, and though some people complained about how it was unfair that only some callers had their number changed, it was still the better decision.