In 1947, when the American Telephone and Telegraph Company (AT&T) divided North America into numbering plan areas (NPAs) for the first nationwide telephone numbering plan, the state of Georgia received only one area code, 404, for the entire state. The city of Atlanta operated one of the eight Regional Centers in the nationwide telephone toll routing system.
On July 1, 1954, the state was divided into two numbering plan areas. The area from Macon southward, including Savannah and Albany, received area code 912. Area code 404 was reduced to the northern half of the state, from the Tennessee and North Carolina borders as far south as Columbus and Augusta.
Despite the presence of Savannah, Albany and Macon, the southern half of Georgia is not nearly as densely populated as the north. As a result, 912 remained the sole area code for south Georgia for 46 years. In contrast, north Georgia went from one numbering plan area to three during the 1990s, plus an overlay for the Atlanta area. By the end of the 1990s, 912 was on the brink of exhaustion due to the proliferation of cell phones and pagers, especially in Savannah, Macon, and Albany.
On August 1, 2000, area code 912 was reduced in size in a three-way split to permit more central office codes in the southern half of the state. Savannah and the eastern portion retained 912. The western portion, centered on Albany, was assigned area code 229, while the northern portion, centered on Macon, received area code 478. Permissive dialing of 912 continued across southern Georgia until August 1, 2001. NANPA projections of October 2022 suggest that coastal Georgia will require an overlay area code around 2029.[1]
