When the North American Numbering Plan was created in 1947, the entire state of Georgia was assigned area code 404. On July 1, 1954, the southern portion of the state, from
Macon southward, was split off with
area code 912. Area code 404 was limited to the northern half of the state, from the Tennessee and North Carolina state lines as far south as Columbus and Augusta. This configuration remained in place for 38 years. In 1992, almost all of the territory outside the Atlanta area was split off with area code 706. 706 consisted of a horseshoe-shaped region that completely wrapped around the inner ring of Atlanta. It also included a number of southern
exurbs of Atlanta. However, the residents of these area objected to no longer being associated with 404. Shortly after 706 commenced service,
BellSouth returned several of these areas to the 404 numbering plan area. The boundary was redrawn in such a way that isolated Columbus and the surrounding area from the rest of 706. BellSouth and the
Georgia Public Service Commission recognized that Atlanta's growth still placed heavy demand on 404 numbering resources. They had already planned to introduce 770 as the area code for Atlanta's suburban ring later in the 1990s. However, the return of the southern exurbs forced the GPSC to activated 770 for service in 1995, a few years sooner than planned. In June 2005, the GPSC announced that 706 had nearly exhausted its capacity of new central office prefixes. On June 24, 2005, the
NANPA assigned area code 762 for this purpose. However, the Columbus area was not large enough for its own area code, but was too large to stay in 706. For this reason, it was decided to make 762 an overlay, with permissive dialing allowed on September 3. On April 1, 2007, ten-digit dialing became mandatory in the overlay area. Despite the rapid growth in 706/762's main section (particularly the northern portion), it is nowhere near exhausting. Projections expected the area to remain in its unusual, non-contiguous state until after 2049. Prior to 1990, area code 706 was used for dialing parts of the Baja California areas of
Mexico from the United States. ==Service area==