One of Connecticut's new area codes is now available, but there's no race for 475.
As of Monday, only one part of one town--the Huntington section of Shelton--had the new 475 numbers immediately available, the Hartford Courant reports.
The reason is that only one telephone company has applied for and received the 475 numbers, the paper reports. No other company has rushed to buy up the new area code because there are still 203 and 860 numbers to go around, the Department of Public Utility Control told the Courant.
Choice One Communications Inc. is the company that did order the area code, but it's returned most of what it ordered. The company originally ordered 10,000 475 numbers, but decided it didn't need so many and returned 9,000 of them, the Courant reports.
According to the North American Numbering Plan Administration, 475 was activated on Saturday.
There are two new area codes: 475 is an "overlay" for the 203 area code region and area code 959 is for areas covered by area code 860. There are no 959 area codes in service because there are still plenty of 860 numbers left, the Courant reports.
Officials said the new area codes are necessary because of the explosive growth in cells, pagers, laptops and other telecommunications devices, making the need for new numbers overwhelming.
