THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Wednesday, June 26, 1996 TAG: 9606260617
SECTION: BUSINESS PAGE: D1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY DAVE MAYFIELD, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: 69 lines
The transition period for Hampton Roads' new area code - 757 - starts Monday.
And the cellular-phone company GTE-Mobilnet is not about to give its customers any excuse for not knowing that fact.
It has taken out ads in newspapers, and on radio and TV. It is mailing notices. It is scheduling special fairs. And its message to local customers is this: ditch 804 as soon as possible and make 757 part of your telephone routine.
Technically, starting on Monday long-distance calls to either code will get through to the more than 1.5 million people who will be part of the 757 area.
This ``grace period'' will expire Jan. 31. After that, only 757 will work in front of phone numbers for Hampton Roads, as well as the Eastern Shore and portions of several western Tidewater counties. Richmond, Lynchburg, Charlottesville and other central Virginia cities and counties will keep 804.
The grace period was established to ease the transition to the new code. A similar grace period was used in western Virginia, where 540 was carved out of the 703 code last July. Dialing 540 became mandatory in January.
Businesses especially appreciate such transition periods because they can use up stationery, business cards and brochures and give their clients time to adjust to dialing a new code.
But for phone companies, the sooner their local customers start telling their out-of-state friends and relatives about 757, the better. It will save a lot of headaches and confusion come February, when there will be no room for dialing errors.
For local cellular companies, the transition from 804 to 757 is particularly critical. Unlike traditional ``landline'' phones, every one of the more than 150,000 cell phones in use by Hampton Roads customers of GTE-Mobilnet and 360 Communications must be reprogrammed to work in the new code.
An unconverted customer is a lost customer - something that the cell-phone companies can't bear to contemplate.
``We're planning a very extensive education process,'' says Carla Ussery, Hampton Roads general manager for GTE Mobilnet.
The most overt gesture planned by her company is turning the ``Roam'' light on all of the phones of GTE Mobilnet's local customers and leaving it on until they bring in their phones for reprogramming.
GTE Mobilnet plans 14 ``update fairs'' between late July and early November throughout the new 757 territory to encourage people to drop by. It plans food and prize giveaways and will provide two months of free emergency roadside assistance coverage for each customer who converts his or her phone. Ussery said GTE Mobilnet will even send vans to the sites of large commercial customers to reprogram their employees' phones.
360 Communications is taking a lower-key approach. It, too, plans to send mobile vans out to large commercial customers' sites, and it will add extra tables at booths it sets up at local music and arts festivals.
But Bob Sage, 360's local general manager, said his company will try to encourage customers to get their phones reprogrammed while they're dropping in for some other transaction. He said 360 plans to offer a number of new services, like Caller ID, that will encourage customers to visit the phone company anyway.
360 also plans to set up a help number to walk customers through the process of reprogramming their phones themselves. Sage said the process should take no longer than about five minutes.
GTE Mobilnet's Ussery said her company would prefer customers not try to reprogram their phones, but will help them do so ``if they insist.'' ILLUSTRATION: Map
ROBERT D. VOROS/The Virginian-Pilot
VIRGINIA'S REALIGNED AREA CODES
SOURCE: Bell Atlantic-Virginia by CNB