For more than a half century, anyone making a local landline phone call in central Illinois has only had to type seven digits into their phone. But on February 27th, that will change, as a new area code will be introduced to the area, 447.
George Light of the Illinois Commerce Commission says the 217 area code is running out of three-digit prefixes—such as 431, 442, 443 and 446 in Danville—that are assigned to local communities. He says the change was first proposed in 2001 but the commission has worked to hold off on it until now.
With the advent of cell phones and voice-over-internet, or VoIP, thousands of new numbers have been assigned to central Illinois. Light says that has led to a reduction of smaller communities being associated with one telephone prefix and, in turn, less opposition to changing the dialing procedure.
Audio Player“So many people have cell phones with contacts queued in that they don’t even ever dial numbers, so there will always be exceptions, but it’s much less onerous today than it was 15, 20 years ago,” he says.
So what will happen if a person tries to dial a 217 number without the area code after the switch is made?
Audio Player“If you try to dial a number that you historically dialed using seven digits, it will go to a recording and ask you to please hang up and redial using the full area code and phone number,” Light explained.
Light says that the second area code, 447, will be introduced as soon as March 2nd. He noted many larger cities in the country, including Illinois, have more than one area code. Chicago, for example, has three different area codes (312, 773 and 872).
