LOUISVILLE — The western half of Kentucky is gobbling up a new series of phone numbers, surprising Kentucky regulators who expected the numbers to last at least a decade.

        A national forecast last month of phone-number use predicted area code 270 could use up its 7.5 million numbers in 2003. The area was split from 502 in 1999.

        The problem isn't just the explosion of cell phones, pagers and other telecommunications gear.

        Another cause is a system of assigning telephone numbers to service providers that dates back to clunky central switching centers and the monopoly of old Ma Bell. A byproduct of that system in recent years was that many phone numbers, assigned in large blocks to fledgling telecom providers, never made it into service.

        For years, only the Federal Communications Commission had the authority to implement measures to conserve phone numbers. But as area codes began to run out of numbers, states have become more involved.

        Kentucky petitioned the FCC to allow it to change the way numbers are assigned in area code 270.

        The key is a plan to cut by 90 percent the number of possible phone numbers a provider can receive at one time.

        Thefederal system now assigns phone companies blocks of 10,000 numbers, even if a company needs far fewer to meet the demand of a community or customer base. That means thousands of numbers can go unused.

        There's a national move to limit the size of those number blocks, or pools, to 1,000. NeuStar Inc., the company handling the pooling process for the FCC, is planning to issue a schedule next March for converting the nation's area codes to 1,000-number pools.

        But Kentucky's regulators say NeuStar will deal with the largest markets first. That will be OK for the 502 and 859 area codes, which have about three years left, but by the time NeuStar gets to area 270 it will be too late.

        So the Kentucky Public Service Commission wants the power to reduce the block size itself and require providers to tell it how many of their numbers they have assigned and how many they expect to use in a reasonable amount of time.

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