
DATE: Sunday, September 7, 1997             TAG: 9709060616

SECTION: BUSINESS                PAGE: D12  EDITION: FINAL 

TYPE: HAMPTON ROADS ALMANAC '97

SOURCE: BY LON WAGNER, STAFF WRITER 

                                            LENGTH:   59 lines

COMMUNICATIONS PHONE COMPANIES RING UP BIG GROWTH FIGURES IN AREA<

If you're wondering why your area code changed earlier this year, look no further than that second - or third - phone line you had installed.

The number of phone lines has been booming over the past couple of years, as people and businesses add lines for computers and faxes.

GTE says that 56 percent of its residential phone line growth in 1996 was due to second, or multiple, phone lines. The number of phone lines in GTE's Hampton Roads service area - Virginia Beach, Chesapeake, Franklin and Isle of Wight County - has increased to 104,920 in June 1997 from 84,797 at the end of 1994, the company said.

GTE nationwide had 16.5 million residential phone lines. More than 10 percent of those are second phone lines.

It's the need for more phone numbers for those extra lines that forced the state to add the 757 area code earlier this year.

Bell Atlantic's total phone lines in Norfolk, Virginia Beach, Portsmouth and Suffolk had increased to 440,784 at the end of 1996, from 416,919 in 1994, the company reports.

Virginia Beach alone added about 16,000 phone lines in two years, according to Bell Atlantic.

Growth in second phone lines has been good for the bottom line of the telephone companies. Bell Atlantic, for instance, had a 5.6 percent revenue increase in its telephone business in its second quarter, partly from continuing growth in demand for phone lines, the company said.

When cellular phones hit the market in 1983, industry analysts predicted that by the year 2000, as many as 1 million people might have one.

That's what you call an estimate that turned out to be ``on the low side.''

Sometime in July, the 50 millionth person signed up for wireless phone service in the United States, according to the Cellular Telephone Industry Association.

Though specific figures for Hampton Roads are not available, the association provides some perspective on the growth of wireless phones. While it took 14 years for wireless phones to reach 50 million customers, it took: land-line telephones 77 years, radio 39 years and television 24 years. MEMO: BUSINESS ALMANAC ILLUSTRATION: Graphics

PHONE LINES

Total telephone lines in Bell Atlantic's Hampton Roads service area,

in end-of-year numbers.

TOP 20 RADIO STATIONS

SOURCE: Arbitron

TOP TELEVISION STATIONS

SOURCE: Nielsen

[For complete graphics, please see microfilm]