That possibility produced much wailing and gnashing of teeth throughout the Granite State until the Federal Communications Commission said better distribution of unused numbers meant 603 would last through the early 2030’s. The absolute deadline for the transition is next June, when the new national suicide hotline begins.Īs you may recall, a decade ago we thought we would soon run out of phone numbers under 603, forcing New Hampshire to adopt a second area code. You can’t count on this, however I’ve also run into a few “cannot connect” automated answers. This morning, in fact, I’ve had two calls go through just fine despite not dialing the area code. Before I give details of this shameful tale, let me mention two other items related to area codes.įirst, although it was generally reported that dialing 603 is now required for all in-state calls, note that not all switches on the landline network have been upgraded so ten-digit dialing is not always necessary, as I noted in my last story on the topic. My favorite piece of information about area codes, something that I have gleefully repeated many times over a dozen years, including as recently as two weeks ago during the rollout of mandatory 603, isn’t actually true. Since I’m one of those people I hate it, too, but when you’ve been repeatedly wrong in print it’s hard to pretend you weren’t bone-headed. If there’s one thing that people hate, it’s admitting they’re wrong.