The number on the print run
Keeping the digits you have, and what porting one between providers actually involves.
Read about business numbers
Jonesboro, AR
Business VoIP in Jonesboro, AR
870 covers an enormous share of Arkansas and, since February 2024, so does 327 over exactly the same ground. Two things follow: everything of yours printed with seven digits is now incomplete, and the code was never telling callers where you are in the first place.
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 recent overlay, and the job it left you
870 was created in April 1997 out of 501, and it took the eastern, southern and northeastern parts of the state. On 20 February 2024 a second code, 327, was laid over all of it. Not a split. Nothing was cut in half, no number changed, and 870 still reaches everything it reached in 2023.
The change that does reach you is the dialling. In a single code region seven digits are enough. Once two codes share the same map they are ambiguous, so ten digits are required for every local call. That is a rule of how numbering works, not a provider setting, and nobody can turn it off for you.
Which means anything of yours still showing seven digits is now incomplete: truck lettering, yard signs, invoice templates, printed forms, the website footer, a recorded greeting that reads the number out at the end, and any record a supplier or a directory is still holding. None of it fails for a caller who already knows the code. All of it fails for the one who does not, and that is the caller you were advertising to.
This is an afternoon of work and there is nothing to buy, which is exactly why it gets postponed. Walk the list of everywhere your number appears and make each one ten digits. Two years in, most of the obvious places have been caught and the ones left are the expensive kind to find.
What a code this size cannot do
There is a second thing worth being clear about, and it was true before the overlay arrived. 870 covers a very large piece of Arkansas. Jonesboro sits in it, and so does a great deal of country several hours away in three directions.
So a caller reading 870 has learned almost nothing about where you are. They have not learned that you are in this city, or that you are near them, or that you will be at their place this week. In a metro with a tight code, a local number does a little quiet work for a business. Here it does much less, and any pitch built on getting you the right digits is selling you something that was never worth much in this region.
What replaces it is the greeting and the answer. A caller who reaches a person who says the business name and knows where they are has learned more in four seconds than the digits could tell them at all. That is not a feature you buy, it is a decision about who picks up.
None of which makes the service local
A business phone service is software, and it runs a long way from here. Nobody wrote it with this city in mind and the feature list was written for everybody at once. The code on the front of your number changes nothing it does.
How the technology works and what it asks of the connection into your building are on the main business VoIP guide. The rest of the state, including the half of it that still runs on a single code, is on business VoIP in Arkansas. Keeping digits you already have printed is on business phone numbers.
Who gains here, and the connection question first
The working economy across this corner runs on agriculture and the businesses that serve it, food processing, freight, and a regional medical and retail trade that pulls in from a long way out. Two of those shapes matter for a phone. Agricultural and freight work runs on a clock the weather and the load set rather than an office one, so calls arrive early and late. Regional trade means a real share of your callers are driving an hour or more to reach you, and they ring first to check it is worth the trip.
For both, the thing worth paying for is that a call is answered by somebody rather than by a machine, wherever that somebody is. One published number that rings whoever is actually free, on a mobile if that is where they are, does more here than any menu. That is virtual phone system, and auto attendant and extensions covers keeping the front of it short.
There is a caution that matters more in this part of the state than in a metro. VoIP is only as good as the connection under it, and connections out here vary a great deal over short distances. A line that is fine for email can still be wrong for voice, because voice is unforgiving about timing in a way a download is not. Test at your busiest hour before you move anything, and if the line stumbles, fix that first. VoIP vs landline sets out when keeping copper is the right answer, and out here that is a live option rather than a formality.
And if you are one person, your customers reach you, and no job has been lost to a missed call, this is a monthly cost against a problem you do not have. Keep what you have.
Worth reading once each
None of these are about Jonesboro. They are the decisions the overlay has just made everybody here look at again.
Answering away from a desk
One published number that reaches whoever is free, which matters most where callers are driving an hour to you.
Read about virtual systemsWhether to switch at all
The honest case for keeping copper, which is a real option out here rather than a formality.
Read VoIP vs landline
Common questions
Jonesboro VoIP questions
Did my 870 number change when 327 arrived?
No. 327 was overlaid on 870, not split out of it, so no existing number changed and none will. What changed is that every local call now takes all ten digits, and anything of yours printed with seven is incomplete. That is a reprinting job, not a renumbering one.
We were offered a 327 number. Does it look out of town?
Not to anybody dialling it. 327 covers exactly the same ground as 870, so the two sit side by side on the same street and the newer one says only that the line was ordered recently. If you already hold an 870 number, port it rather than replacing it, because it is printed on things you have paid for.
Our internet drops sometimes. Should we still move the phones?
Not until the connection is sorted. Voice is less forgiving than almost anything else you run over a line, because it cares about steady timing rather than raw speed, and a connection that is fine for email can still make calls unusable. Test at your busiest hour first. If it stumbles then, fix the line before you move the phone, or keep copper for now.
Test the line before you move the phones
Tell us what your connection does at your busiest hour and how calls reach you today. If the honest answer is to leave it alone, that is what we will tell you.