Growing Florida: the shortage of phone numbers

I have a confession. We install phones. I didn’t set out in my IT career to become a phone guy, but over the last few years we’ve had clients suffer with antiquated phone systems with accompanying horror stories of lackluster support from the phone installer. So, alas, we started doing hybrid cloud, VoIP phones and haven’t looked back.

Most of the time we are porting over existing phone numbers clients own, but every so often we have the absolute pleasure of being with a company at their inception, at the time they’re establishing their first address and phone number. This happened last month and I had a strange thing happen. There was no phone number inventory in their area and we had to backorder numbers.

There are currently 18 different area codes in Florida, and apparently with our fast growth rate, some rate centers are starting to fill up pretty fast. A rate center is what shows up as the caller’s city if you have caller ID. With Florida developers and rate center availability not exactly being on the same page, it looks like periodic phone number shortages for new businesses will be something we struggle with for sometime.

And in case you’re wondering about the rotary phone, the picture was taken of my desk as I’m writing this article. It was a gift from my dad and it has the 305 area code printed on it from the days when all of Florida was on just one area code. Yes, it’s real and actually functions and sometimes when my kids are around I call it just to feel nostalgic. I guess it’s one of those perks of being a phone guy.