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Area codes 404, 678 maxed out for metro Atlanta
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ATLANTA (AP) — New phones issued in metro Atlanta will no longer come with the 404 and 678 area codes.

Instead, the national organization that assigns area codes will start using the 470 code for the region. No existing phone numbers will be changed.

John Manning, the senior director of the North American Number Planning Association, said officials assigned the last prefix to the 404 area code on Oct. 11. The prefix is the three-digit sequence that comes after an area code. The 404 area code has been used in Atlanta for six decades.

Each area code can have about 8 million phone numbers.

Metro Atlanta now has four area codes: 470, 404, 678 and 770, which was created in 1995 for communities in the outer metro region.

Manning told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution (http://bit.ly/1btZnox) that consistent population growth has driven the need for more area codes.

"It's not a Texas or a New York, but Georgia does have quite a bit of growth, primarily due to your Atlanta metropolitan area," Manning said.