New area code unveiled for Southcentral Pa.
Next year, the Pennsylvania Public Utility Commission will begin to issue the new 223 area codes.
Get ready to dial "223."
Southcentral Pennsylvania residents who get new phone numbers soon will be issued the new 223 prefix, the Pennsylvania Public Utility Commission said Wednesday.
That area — the entire geographic area currently covered by the 717 prefix — includes all of York, Adams, Cumberland, Dauphin and Franklin counties and most of Lancaster and Lebanon counties, said commission spokesman Nils Hagen-Frederiksen.
The 223 area code addresses the region's dwindling stock of remaining phone numbers, Hagen-Frederiksen said. An area code can support about 7.9 million phone numbers. Current forecasts predict the supply of phone numbers available in the 717 area code will run out by fall 2017.
The North American Numbering Plan Administrator, Neustar, Inc., is the agency that chose the 223 area code, the release states. The Public Utility Commission will begin to give out the 223 area codes once the remaining 717 numbers are depleted.
Consumers will have to begin dialing 10 digits to make calls once the 223 prefix goes into play.
"For now, nothing changes," Hagen-Frederiksen said. "But eventually, as we get closer to the time that the last 717 numbers are available, consumers will be prompted to start dialing 10 digits. But that transition process will happen much later, next year."
People also can prepare for the change by going through their mobile phone contacts to make sure they have 10-digit numbers programmed in for all of their contacts, even those that have a 717 area code, Hagen-Frederiksen said. That simple step will prevent misdials once the change is in effect.