ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Sunday, June 30, 1996 TAG: 9607010087
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: B-6 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: NORFOLK
A new 757 area code will take effect Monday in Hampton Roads, the Eastern Shore and portions of several western Tidewater counties.
Or at least that is the official start-up date. Bell Atlantic Corp. and GTE Corp. have been reprogramming the computers that control the local phone-switching network over the last couple of months. The changeover was completed last week.
``We're ready,'' Hank Kofron, manager of Bell Atlantic's eastern Virginia network operations, declared Friday.
Callers will have a seven-month grace period for becoming accustomed to dialing 757 instead of 804. The new area code will become mandatory Feb. 1, 1997, for all long-distance calls in the affected region. Until then, callers can dial either area code.
The new area code was needed because of the proliferation of cellular phones, pagers, facsimile machines and computers that use phone lines.
The 757 area includes Accomack County, Chesapeake, Franklin, Hampton, Isle of Wight County, James City County, Newport News, Norfolk, Northampton County, Poquoson, Portsmouth, Suffolk, Virginia Beach, Williamsburg and York County.
New Kent, Prince George, Southampton, Surry and Sussex counties will be partly in 757 and partly in 804.
And who will keep 804? Two counties in the Hampton Roads metropolitan area, Gloucester and Mathews, plus all of central Virginia.
- Associated Press
LENGTH: Short : 36 linesby CNB