Raise your hand if you wondered as a child if the number of phone numbers would ever be exhausted.
We’re not there yet, but a story in this newspaper Friday brought the news that within the next year or so we’ll have to use the area code — currently 423 — before any local number we call.
“They don’t ever want to get to the point where they run out of numbers, and we’re not prepared,” John Hutton, telecom/utilities consultant for the Tennessee Public Utilities Commission, told this newspaper’s Mike Pare.
The growth of East Tennessee within the 423 area code is forcing the change, he said.
The changeover is expected to take about 13 months.