BY WESLEY YOUNG
SALISBURY POST

Soon, you may have to dial 10 digits just to reach someone across the street.

North Carolina telephone companies are proposing a new ‘‘overlay’’ area code for the 704 calling area. Basically, the two area codes would share the same geographic area.

The advantage is that people wouldn’t have to go through the hassle of dealing with a new area code, as many telephone customers around the state have had to do in recent years. Current customers would keep their 704 area code and phone number.

New customers might receive the new area code, in much the same way that new customers now get the new telephone number prefixes.

The disadvantage is that all local callers would have to dial 10 digits – the area code of the person called, plus the regular number.

‘‘In the past, when North Carolina has implemented a new area code, we have done it with the geographical split method,’’ said Clifton Metcalf, spokesman for Bell South. In the most recent split, the old 704 area code region was divided, with the mountains getting a new area code, 828.

But Metcalf said it appears the available prefixes in the 704 area will run out by March, 2001. North Carolina phone companies are together proposing the new overlay area code as a better solution for the shortage of telephone numbers. The new system would go into effect in June, 2000.

‘‘Theoretically, you could implement a split right down to the city block level, if you really wanted to,’’ Metcalf said. ‘‘Does it make sense to continue carving the state into increasingly smaller sections? Each time you do, you are creating customer inconvenience, cost and confusion. In a split, a fairly significant amount of customers end up with new telephone numbers. With an overlay, no one changes an area code. You keep exactly what you have today.’’

The proposed change must still get approval from the N.C. Utilities Commission, which is holding a 7:30 p.m. public hearing on April 19, in the Government Center in downtown Charlotte.

Metcalf said the industry is working on a way to forestall the creation of new area codes by splitting into smaller segments the 10,000-number blocks of numbers associated with each telephone prefix.

For instance, if a city had 21,000 telephones, it would need three 10,000-block prefixes. But that would mean 9,000 telephone numbers were idle. It’s possible another nearby community could use those numbers, Metcalf said, if the technology existed that would make that split possible.