Phone accounts get 678 area code today
By Ernie Suggs, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Residents in parts of Marietta, Lawrenceville and Cumming will start receiving the new 678 area code today if they start new telephone service.
Currently being served by the 770 area code, the communities will be the first to get 678 -- created when BellSouth decided to guard against the exhaustion of the 770 and 404 area codes in the Atlanta metro area.
"People have been wondering when we were going to start giving out the new numbers," said Lynn Bress, a spokeswoman for BellSouth.
Bress said that beginning Jan.15, at differing intervals, Duluth, Alpharetta, Roswell, Morrow and Dunwoody will start getting the new numbers until all of 770 is covered. No one in the 770 area with telephone service will be switched to 678, said Bress.
People now living in Atlanta's 404 area code will not see a change until 1999, Bress said. Cell phone users and Internet providers, however, may be issued numbers with a 678 area code.
The change to 10-digit dialing for all callers took effect last week. Because of the holiday, Monday marked the first day of typical business demands on the system.
"From a BellSouth perspective, it has gone smoothly," said Bress. "We still had some customers who hadn't reprogrammed their phones and missed some calls over the weekend. But those things are minor."
Bress said that about 99 percent of the complaints the company is getting are because customers have misdialed, have not reprogrammed their telecommunications equipment, or are trying to call a business that hasn't reprogrammed.
Several large Atlanta-based companies reported no problems.
But even though Bress estimates that most customers are adjusting, there were still pockets of people having problems Monday.
Callers from Marietta to northern Cherokee County were stymied all weekend after the switch left thousands unable to connect.
Officials with Alltel Georgia Communications Inc., the company serving north Cherokee, said until late Monday afternoon anyone from east Marietta dialing Waleska, Holly Springs, Ball Ground or Canton using the exchanges 345, 720, 704 and 479 couldn't get through without using an operator.
The problem, according to Michael Morris with Alltel, was that the switching system in Marietta hadn't been set up for 10-digit dialing to north Cherokee. That meant that anyone dialing properly was greeted with either a phone that rang and was never answered or a message saying the call couldn't be completed as dialed.
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