The 571 area code covers Northern Virginia — Arlington, Alexandria, Falls Church, Fairfax County, Loudoun County out through Leesburg, and Prince William County down to Manassas and Quantico — occupying the exact territory of 703 as an overlay. NANPA assigned the code on June 1, 1999 and placed it in service on March 1, 2000, which made it Virginia’s first overlay and brought the state its first mandatory ten-digit dialing.
Get a 571 with no warning? It reads as the Virginia side of the DC metro — Arlington, Alexandria, Fairfax — though either code can be worn by calls from anywhere, so the digits settle nothing.
571 at a glance
| Quick fact | Answer |
|---|---|
| In service since | March 1, 2000 |
| Overlay | 571 is itself the overlay, laid over 703’s exact territory |
| Territory anchors | Arlington, Alexandria, Fairfax County, Leesburg, Manassas |
| Dialing | Ten digits for local calls since March 1, 2000 |
| Exhaust projection | Q1 2031 for the 571/703 complex (NANPA, April 2026) |
Most area codes earn their page in numbering history by being split. This one earned it by refusing the split: Virginia’s regulators decided in 1998 that the Washington suburbs would keep every number they had and absorb a second code on top. The 1947 original’s longer story — statewide birth, two territorial losses — belongs to our 703 area code guide; what follows is the overlay’s side of it, through to the 2031 exhaust date now on NANPA’s books.
Why Northern Virginia got a layer, not another line
By the late 1990s, 703 had already been cut down twice — 804 took the east in 1973, and 540 took the west along with Fredericksburg in 1995 — leaving the dense inner ring across the Potomac from Washington. Planning Letter PL-NANP-177, issued June 1, 1999, recorded what came next: heavy number demand across Northern Virginia, a relief plan approved by the Virginia State Corporation Commission, and a new code, 571, laid over 703 rather than carved out of it.
The bargain inside an overlay hasn’t changed since. Nobody renumbers — every existing 703 line stayed exactly as printed on a generation of business cards — but seven-digit dialing dies, because two codes on one map mean seven digits no longer name a single line. That trade-off gets a fuller treatment in our area code guide; Northern Virginia accepted it earlier than almost anyone.
The map NANPA attached to PL-177 draws the boundary both codes still share: most of Loudoun County through Leesburg and Dulles, Fairfax County with Herndon and Falls Church, Arlington and Alexandria on the river, and Prince William County through Manassas, Triangle, and the Quantico Marine Reservation. Western Loudoun towns like Purcellville and Middleburg sit just outside on the 540 side of the line, as do Warrenton and Fredericksburg.
A rollout on Bell Atlantic’s clock
The schedule in PL-177 moved briskly for a numbering change. Permissive ten-digit dialing began June 1, 1999 — the same day NANPA issued the letter and, per its database, the same day 571 was formally assigned. Carriers interconnecting with Bell Atlantic had until August 31, 1999 to move their trunk translations to ten digits, and every domestic and international carrier was expected to have 571 activated before February 1, 2000.
From that February date, a test line answered at 571-594-TEST — 571-594-8378 — playing a recorded announcement to any carrier verifying its routing. The overlay itself arrived March 1, 2000. From then on, the dialing plan published in PL-177 governed: ten digits for every local call, 1 plus ten for toll, 0 plus ten for operator-assisted — the same plan NANPA’s database lists for the pair today.
One figure in the letter aged less well. NANPA forecast that 703 overlaid with 571 would exhaust in 7.2 years — roughly 2007, counted from the overlay’s activation. Northern Virginia is still drawing numbers from that pool a quarter century later; the current arithmetic is below.
Ten digits while the rest of Virginia dialed seven
For twenty-two years the overlay stood alone in the state. Virginia’s second didn’t arrive until May 9, 2022, when 948 went in over Hampton Roads’ 757; 826 followed over 540 that June, and 686 went live over Richmond’s 804 on February 1, 2024. Each of those regions ran its ten-digit conversion in the 2020s. Northern Virginia had finished the same homework in 2000.
The early conversion paid off when 988 arrived. The FCC’s crisis-line order pushed 82 area codes that still dialed seven digits and used 988 as a working prefix onto mandatory ten-digit dialing on October 24, 2021, and NANPA’s Planning Letter PL-556 lists Virginia’s share as 276 and 804. Neither 703 nor 571 appears anywhere in it — the conversion other regions crammed for in 2021, this footprint had completed twenty-one years earlier.
The 7.2-year forecast and the 2031 horizon
Now the arithmetic is tightening again. NANPA’s April 2026 NPA Exhaust Analysis — compiled from NRUF and central office code data as of March 1, 2026 — allots the 571/703 complex until the first quarter of 2031. That is two quarters later than the prior study’s call, and the July 6, 2026 delta confined itself to Texas, so the date held.
Context makes the number stark. Every other Virginia pair clears mid-century in the same analysis — 540/826 to 1Q 2053, 686/804 to 4Q 2055, 757/948 out to 3Q 2062 — and around the capital, Maryland’s 227/240/301 complex runs to 2041 while Washington’s 202, overlaid by 771, stretches to 2088. The Virginia side of the DC metro holds the earliest exhaust date in the entire region, by a full decade.
What NANPA’s database does not yet show is a response: as of mid-August 2026, the 571/703 record shows an empty jeopardy column and no relief docket. Four and a half years of runway is not a crisis, but it makes Northern Virginia the region’s obvious candidate for the next relief docket — and whenever that opens, there are no dialing habits left to break. Ten digits has been the rule here since 2000.
What a 571 display says in the DC suburbs
On a caller ID in Northern Virginia, 571 and 703 carry identical weight — same rate centers, same footprint, different vintage. Which code a new line draws depends on prefix inventory at the moment of assignment; how those prefixes are structured is its own subject. For outbound teams working Fairfax or Arlington lists, either display reads as the Virginia side of the metro — for what matching display to market does to answer rates, see our local presence guide.
A screen can be lied to, of course: caller ID spoofing will wear either code on calls from anywhere, which is why the trust that matters is applied at the carrier layer, not the display.
That layer is where SIPNEX operates. It is the carrier of record on its own FCC authorization, and it provisions local DID numbers per individual rate center across US markets, Northern Virginia’s among them as inventory allows. SIP trunking carries the numbers into the PBX or dialer currently in service; outbound calls go out the door signed A-level under SIPNEX’s own STIR/SHAKEN certificate, and toll-free numbering comes through the company’s RespOrg registration if a campaign ever needs one.
The 571/703 overlay, in five questions
What part of Virginia does the 571 area code cover?
Northern Virginia, on the same boundary NANPA mapped for 703 in Planning Letter PL-177: Arlington and Alexandria on the Potomac, Falls Church, Fairfax County including Herndon and the Dulles corridor, most of Loudoun County through Leesburg, and Prince William County with Manassas, Triangle, and Quantico. Purcellville and western Loudoun fall outside in 540, along with Warrenton and Fredericksburg. Everything inside the boundary keeps Eastern Time.
Is a 571 number as local as a 703 number?
Yes — by definition. 571 is an all-services overlay, so it occupies exactly the territory 703 does, rate center for rate center. No 703 number changed when the overlay activated on March 1, 2000; new assignments simply began drawing on a second pool. To a caller in Fairfax or Arlington, the two codes are the same place.
When did the 571 area code go into service?
March 1, 2000, per NANPA’s database — with a long on-ramp. NANPA assigned the code and issued Planning Letter PL-NANP-177 on June 1, 1999, permissive ten-digit dialing began that same day, and carriers could verify routing against the 571-594-TEST line from February 1, 2000. It was the first overlay in Virginia; the state’s next, 948 over Hampton Roads, didn’t arrive until 2022.
Will 571 and 703 run out of numbers?
Eventually — and sooner than any neighboring code. NANPA’s April 2026 NPA Exhaust Analysis gives the combined 571/703 pool until the first quarter of 2031 — a date the July 6, 2026 revisions left unchanged. No jeopardy has been declared and no relief planning is open yet, but every other code complex in the capital region — Maryland’s, Washington’s, and the rest of Virginia’s — is forecast to outlast this one.
Can a business outside Virginia use a 571 area code number?
Yes. Numbers are provisioned by rate center rather than street address, so a 571 or 703 DID will ring wherever your phones are, in any state, over SIP. Availability tracks each Northern Virginia rate center’s stock on the morning the order lands — SIPNEX provisions local DID numbers there and across US markets, delivered by SIP trunk to the platform you already run.
From Virginia’s first ten-digit metro to the region’s tightest number pool, the 571/703 footprint rewards carriers that actually hold inventory in it. SIPNEX keeps Northern Virginia DIDs under its own FCC authorization, ships them over SIP trunking, and signs every call A-level on a certificate it holds itself — reach the desk at (833) 665-2220, check current rates, or write to the team.
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