The number that outlasts the person
One business number that reaches whoever currently holds a role, rather than a personal mobile that follows somebody out of the door.
Read about virtual systems
Arlington, VA
Business VoIP in Arlington, VA
703 and 571 cover northern Virginia together and have since 2000, so the code is settled and barely a decision. The harder question here is what a local number means in a region where a great deal of the working population is not at any particular desk on any particular day.
Disclosure: AldoMedia is a paid affiliate of Unitel Voice. If you sign up through a link on this page we may earn a commission, at no extra cost to you. We only recommend what we would set up for our own clients, and we say plainly below who should not buy this.
A settled overlay and a famous code
703 is one of the original 1947 codes and once covered most of Virginia. It has been cut back repeatedly and now covers the northern corner. 571 was laid over exactly the same ground in March 2000, so ten digit dialling has been normal for twenty five years and nothing printed in that time is incomplete.
703 carries more recognition than most area codes because of what sits around it, and that produces a small industry selling 703 numbers as though they were credentials. They are not. The two codes cover identical territory, and anybody who works here knows it.
Port a 703 number if you already hold one, because it is printed on things you have paid for and porting is routine. Take 571 without hesitation if that is what is offered. Neither decision is worth delaying a week over. It is all covered on business phone numbers.
When nobody is at the office, what is a local number for?
This region has an unusually distributed working pattern. People work from home part of the week, from client sites, from a different jurisdiction than the one their employer is registered in, and often across a boundary between two states and a district without regarding it as travel.
That makes the question of where a business is genuinely ambiguous, and it makes the phone number the most stable thing about it. In a conventional market the number points at a building. Here it frequently points at nothing physical at all, and everyone involved is comfortable with that.
Two practical consequences follow. First, publishing a personal mobile is worse here than almost anywhere, because the person will move employer, role or jurisdiction long before the number stops circulating. The business number should be the one that gets written down, and it should reach whoever currently holds the role. That is the actual argument for this class of service, and it is stronger here than the feature lists suggest.
Second, be careful about implying an office you do not keep. Plenty of businesses here are legitimately distributed and say so, and customers in this region are entirely used to it. A firm that implies a staffed office and cannot produce one when somebody wants to drop in has created a problem it did not need to have. The honest version, that work is done from wherever the work is and the number always reaches somebody, is easier to keep.
None of which makes the service local
There is no northern Virginia phone product. The software is the same one a business in Iowa is sold, it runs from data centers a long way from here regardless of what runs nearby, and the only thing your address decides is the three digits at the front.
How it works and what it asks of your connection are on the main business VoIP guide. The rest of the state, which is a different economy at a different cost base, is on business VoIP in Virginia.
Who gains here
The working economy here is professional and technical services, government contracting and the consultancies around it, technology, law and finance, and the very large hospitality, trades and property sector that serves all of them.
For the professional side the useful setup is narrow: a direct number per person that reaches them wherever they are working that day, a greeting short enough to be a courtesy, and a rule that passes an unanswered call to a named colleague rather than a voicemail box. Virtual phone system covers the first and auto attendant and extensions the second.
For the trades and services the calculation inverts entirely. The caller is a stranger with an urgent problem who is ringing three numbers, and the only thing that matters is that a person answers. No feature substitutes for that and no menu improves it.
Who should not bother: one person, one phone, customers who already reach you. That is a monthly cost against a problem you do not have, and we would rather write that here than after you have signed. And if the connection into your building is unreliable, deal with it first, because voice is less forgiving than anything else you run over a line. VoIP vs landline is the honest case for copper.
The decisions behind the number
None of these are about Arlington. The first matters more here than almost anywhere, because the number outlasts the desk.
Keeping the front short
Menus and greetings, and why a known caller should not work through options to reach one person.
Read about auto attendantThe number itself
Why a 703 number is not a credential, and what porting one between providers involves.
Read about business numbersWhether to switch at all
The honest case for keeping a copper line, which still applies to some buildings and connections.
Read VoIP vs landline
Common questions
Arlington VoIP questions
Is a 703 number worth paying extra for?
No. 703 and 571 have covered identical ground since 2000 and everybody who works here knows it, so the recognition 703 carries is about the region rather than about you. Port one if you already hold it, because it is printed on things you have paid for. Do not delay a decision or pay a premium to get one.
We do not keep a staffed office. What should the phone say?
The truth, which in this region is completely unremarkable. A business number that always reaches somebody is a stronger position than an implied office you cannot produce when a customer asks to drop in. What matters is that the published number is the business's rather than an individual's, so it keeps working when people change roles.
Our people work across the district and Maryland too. Does that complicate the phone?
Not the phone itself, which does not care where somebody physically answers. It can complicate registration, tax and licensing, and those are questions for your accountant rather than your phone provider. Getting a number is easy. Knowing where you are permitted to do the work is a separate and more important question.
Make the number the business's, not a person's
Tell us which numbers your customers actually have written down and who they reach. If they are already business numbers rather than personal mobiles, we will tell you so.