New Hampshire is among a small number of states unified under a singular area code, and Granite State lawmakers are looking to keep it that way — even as telephone numbers with the iconic 603 code appear to be dwindling.
The state’s Senate passed a bill last week aimed at preserving the 603 code, one of the original 86 area codes that launched in 1947.
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The legislation “is seeking to do everything that New Hampshire can do under our law to extend the 603 area code,” Senate President Jeb Bradley explained during a Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee hearing last month.
He noted that the area code is “part of our identity; it’s part of our brand.”
According to Bradley, the North American Numbering Plan Administrator, which oversees telephone numbering throughout the continent, projects that numbers with a 603 area code will run out sometime in the next three or four years.
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New Hampshire will likely need a second area code if it doesn’t take action, Bradley said, and a new code “would dilute our brand.”
He noted that the state has taken some steps already; last fall, Gov. Chris Sununu signed an executive order (dubbed “Don’t Overload the Code”) ordering New Hampshire’s Department of Energy to “investigate durable strategies” to conserve the area code.
“Our 603 Area Code is a point of pride in New Hampshire,” Sununu said in a statement at the time. “In order to ensure that ‘603’ will remain New Hampshire’s exclusive area code in the years to come, my Administration is taking all available steps at our disposal, and we are confident that the actions taken in this Executive Order will help prolong the exhaustion date by many years — giving residents and businesses peace of mind!”
But, as Bradley noted, “we can do more, and that’s where the bill comes in.”
Aptly titled SB 603-FN, the Senate bill that passed last week is partly inspired by successful area code conservation efforts in Maine, state Sen. Regina Birdsell explained just before the vote. Faced with the possibility of running out of phone numbers with a 207 area code by 2025, Maine was able to extend the code’s shelf life by curbing robocallers and taking a second look at forecasting and block request practices, according to the Portland Press Herald.
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And New Hampshire leaders have been working to keep 603 phone numbers around since at least 1990, according to the Concord Monitor.
While a single area code can theoretically include 7.7 million different seven-digit phone numbers, “the problem is that phone numbers are allocated in a very inefficient manner because of how the telephone switching network was constructed in the pre-digital era,” the newspaper explained in an article last November.
Speaking during the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee hearing last month, state Rep. Timothy Horrigan noted that demand for 603 numbers has already begun to outpace supply.
He cited an example from his own life: About five years ago, he tried to set up a Google Voice number to use as an answering machine, only to find that the telephone service had run out of New Hampshire numbers.
“They recommended I get one in Massachusetts,” Horrigan said. “I didn’t like that, either. So I ended up getting an 802 number.”
As a New Hampshire state representative, he explained, “It’s less embarrassing calling from a Vermont number than from a Massachusetts number.”
Source: https://t-tees.com
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