A dozen years ago, our increasingly connected society was facing a crisis. We were running out of telephone numbers -- or so we thought. With the increase in fax machines, beepers, cellular phones and computer modems, we seemed to be skating on thin ice in our telecommunications endeavors. So the telecommunications companies (aka Baby Bells) were working with the federal government to do something about it -- creating new area codes.

As proof, the other day I dug up an older letter in my archives sent to my home by the then-manager of external affairs at Bell Atlantic. In her letter, she alerted me to the coming crises and that it was partly caused by new companies that were emerging to give us local phone service.

It announced that Bell Atlantic (which later became Verizon) would be meeting the challenge by adding a new area code on May 1, 1997. She crowed that splitting our area code in two would "provide millions of new phone numbers to meet your growing communications needs."

I remember the hubbub that ensued as businesses realized they'd no longer be in the same phone districts as their customers. They'd have to throw out their soon-to-be obsolete business cards (because their numbers will have changed). And they'd have to reprogram their telephone systems and computers to work properly in the new environment.

The letter claimed that "dialing couldn't be easier" because if you were still in the same area code, you'd "Just continue to dial the same 7-digit number." I wonder if they knew back then, that a few years later, we would suddenly have to dial 10-digits for every call, including local calls.

The threat of too few numbers seems to have left our consciousness as many cities took on multiple new area codes. (Los Angeles has 11 -- plus a couple more in the surrounding areas).

Our memories of that impending crisis became more remote as technology trends changed. We've replaced dial-up modems with DSL, cable and other new Internet technologies that don't require a separate number. Faxes are becoming passe. And many people are replacing their landlines (aka POTS -- plain ol' telephone service) with cell phones. The need is still growing, just not in the epidemic proportions we envisioned in the late 1990s.

Our numbers are now portable, which means we can transfer our old landlines to our cell phones or IP phones. In theory that means the competing telephone companies don't need to use huge blocks of numbers just to get a few. It also means our number can have a San Francisco area code, even if we live in Orlando, Fla.

But it's still not perfect. I don't understand why, when my mother moved from suburb to city in the same Connecticut area code, AT&T wouldn't let her take her number with her -- a number that she had been using for 35 years. I can move a Verizon number to Vonage and use it anywhere in the United States. But AT&T wouldn't allow her to move her number six miles away in the same corporate system.

One fact remains constant. It's difficult to compare telecommunications services, because, even if the service providers allow us to leave them at will (which isn't always the case), it's a difficult move. It takes time to compare. The services are too expensive to compare side by side and too time-consuming to change often. So they have us where they want us -- whether "they" are phone, cable, cell phone or Internet vendors.