Q. So what happened?

A. NeuStar sent our engineers into a locked conference room, and we didn’t let them out until they came back with a better solution. It was a number pooling system that we proposed to the industry and the Federal Communications Commission. It was mandated by the F.C.C. so that all telephone companies must adhere to it. As a result, the life of the 10-digit telephone number system now extends beyond 2030 or 2035.

Q. What’s the concept of pooling in a nutshell?

A. It used to be when a telephone company needed a number, the smallest block of numbers we could give them was 10,000 numbers, or the equivalent of an entire local exchange. If you were a telephone company and had a single customer in a town, you’d come to me and I’d have to give you an area code, say 422, and all 10,000 numbers that come with that. But we used an advanced technology in the routing database and, for the first time, were able to allocate blocks of 1,000 telephone numbers.

Q. So it was your company that was involved in deciding that some people in Manhattan could not have 212 numbers but instead had to have 646 area codes?

A. I knew that NeuStar was playing an important role in the industry when I saw there was a “Seinfeld” episode on exactly that problem. The fact is, there are only so many telephone numbers associated with any one area code. So with the explosive growth in the number of telephones and network endpoints, there’s been a huge demand, and area codes have been altered.

What’s a fascinating twist on this, it used to be that when you dialed a 212 area code number, you knew you were dialing a telephone number on the island of Manhattan. Now with the coming of voice over the Internet, VoIP, you can dial a 212 telephone number and have the number ring a phone in Buenos Aires or Moscow. The significance of telephone numbers has changed. The system is becoming much more complex and increasingly requires the routing capability of the central directory that NeuStar manages on behalf of all networks.

Q. What other areas have had to introduce new area codes?

A. It hasn’t happened just in established cities but also in rural areas as well. That’s where the growth often has been the fastest. Frequently, some of the exurbs that have grown very quickly over the past 10 years have required new area codes to bolster the supply of telephone numbers to meet demand. Sterling, Va., where our company is based, now has a 571 area code that supplements the 703 area code that covers much of northern Virginia.

Q. Why did you spin off from Lockheed Martin in 1999? Why wouldn’t they want to keep you?

A. When NeuStar got started, this business had never existed before. For the first time, rivals from different telephone companies had to sit at a table and say, “For the common good, we need an independent company to provide a trusted routing directory we all will depend upon. Each of us will put information about all our customers and where their telephone calls should be routed into this database.” AT&T, Verizon, TMobile and Comcast don’t trust each other  they are competitors. But they trust NeuStar to hold this very valuable data.

So we needed to manage the trust of those competing carriers, and part of that trust was a contractual pledge that we would be neutral, hence the name. Separately, Lockheed Martin was acquiring Comsat, a carrier. As a result, they had to divest either Comsat or NeuStar. Even the appearance of NeuStar managing telephone numbers in favor of a network owned by the corporate parent would have violated that trust.