940 Area Code: Wichita Falls, Denton, Red River

The 940 area code is North Texas above Fort Worth — Wichita Falls, Denton, Gainesville, Decatur, Vernon, Graham, Mineral Wells and Bowie, running from the Red River on the Oklahoma line down to Denton County’s edge of the metroplex. It has been the only code on that map since May 25, 1997, with no overlay then or now.

Wichita Falls or Denton is the likeliest origin — a clinic, a university office, a neighbor two counties over — but likeliest is as far as the display can take you, since any spoofer can borrow the digits.

940, the short version

Line item	940
Answering since	May 25, 1997
Cut from	817, in the three-way Fort Worth split of 1997
Second code on the map	None — 940 has never been overlaid
Where it rings	Wichita Falls, Denton, Gainesville, Vernon, Graham
How locals dial	Ten digits, mandatory since October 24, 2021
Forecast horizon	Fourth quarter of 2049 (NANPA, April 2026 study)

Some codes accumulate a shelf of planning letters. NANPA’s NPA database lists four for 940, and between them they describe exactly two events: the letter that created the code, a one-page correction to that letter, and the pair of letters that ended seven-digit dialing in 2021. Twenty-nine years, two stories — and both still shape how a 940 number works today.

A 25-county slice of the old 817

Bellcore’s NANP Administration issued Planning Letter PL-NANP-034 on January 22, 1997, at Southwestern Bell’s request: growth around Fort Worth had outrun a single code, so 817 would be cut three ways at once. The metropolitan core and Arlington kept 817. The southern side — all or part of 23 counties around Waco — became 254. The northern section, which the letter describes as a 25-county area including Wichita Falls and Denton, became 940. NANPA’s database logs 940 as assigned that same day.

The exchange list Southwestern Bell attached to the letter tallies 152 prefixes moving to 940, each a block of 10,000 numbers. Reading down it is a tour of the territory: Denton and its satellites — Lake Dallas, Argyle, Justin, Ponder, Krum, Sanger, Aubrey, Pilot Point — then Decatur, Bridgeport and Bowie; Gainesville, Muenster, Nocona and Saint Jo along the Red River; Wichita Falls with Burkburnett, Iowa Park, Electra and Henrietta; and west and south through Vernon, Quanah, Childress, Seymour, Graham, Jacksboro, Mineral Wells, Haskell and Aspermont.

No later letter has touched that line. The four planning-letter numbers NANPA lists for 940 are PL-034, its test-number correction PL-064, and the two 988 dialing letters — none of them redraws a boundary — so the map drawn for that spring is the map today, all of it on Central Time. The state’s full roster sits in our Texas area codes directory.

A spring cutover on 123 days’ notice

The schedule was the unusual part. The letter set the split — and the start of permissive dialing for both new codes — at 12:01 a.m. EDT on Sunday, May 25, 1997, 123 days after it was signed, and relayed Southwestern Bell’s warning that the accelerated 817/254/940 timetable would need special attention from the industry and from customers across the country. Every domestic and international carrier was asked to have 254 and 940 activated in its network before that morning.

A three-month permissive period followed, ending at 12:01 a.m. EDT on Sunday, August 24, 1997. Inside it, a number in the new territory answered whether you dialed 817 or 940; what never worked, even for a day, was reaching a 940 number through 254 or the reverse.

Carriers could check routing against a recorded announcement on a test line, 940-955-8378, live from May 12, 1997. Planning Letter PL-NANP-064 of May 22, 1997 then revised one of the plan’s two test numbers, republishing the pair as 254-955-8378 and 940-955-8378 and leaving every other condition of the split as it was. Both lines were disconnected when permissive dialing ended.

The dialing plan did not change at all. The letter spelled it out: seven digits for local calls within the home code, 1 plus ten for toll, ten digits for local calls into a neighboring code, 0 plus ten for operator-assisted calls — the rules 817 had used, carried into both new codes. Fort Worth gave up seven-digit dialing in 2000 when the 682 overlay arrived; the northern code kept the habit for another twenty-one years.

Is Denton really in the 940 area code?

Yes — and it is the question the code raises most often, because Denton sits inside the Dallas–Fort Worth metroplex yet shares no code with Dallas’s 214 family or Fort Worth’s 817. The 1997 split list assigned the Denton exchanges, along with Lake Dallas, Argyle, Justin, Aubrey and Pilot Point, to the northern code, and nothing since has moved them. A University of North Texas office and a Wichita Falls supply house dial the same three digits; the suburbs a few miles south of Denton carry Dallas codes instead.

North of Denton the code widens to take in the Red River frontier from Gainesville west to Childress, with Wichita Falls — Sheppard Air Force Base beside it — as the largest city on the Red River side, then drops south through Graham and Jacksboro to Mineral Wells and Possum Kingdom Lake. East of Gainesville, 903 and its 430 overlay take over. Across the river the rules change too: NANPA still lists seven-digit local dialing inside Oklahoma’s 580, a habit the Texas bank of the river gave up in 2021.

Twenty-four years of seven digits, ended by a hotline

For twenty-four years the dialing rules from 1997 stood. What ended them was national, not local. FCC 20-100 — adopted July 16, 2020, released the next day — designated 988 as the three-digit number for the suicide-and-crisis lifeline and ordering mandatory ten-digit dialing in every area code where seven-digit local calls coexisted with a working 988 prefix. 940 met both tests.

NANPA set the calendar in Planning Letter PL-544 (August 17, 2020) and reissued it as PL-556 on January 8, 2021, after North Dakota’s 701 returned its 988 prefix and dropped off, trimming the list from 83 codes to 82. On both versions of the letter, 940 appears beside the same six Texas neighbors: 254, 361, 409, 806, 830 and 915. Permissive ten-digit dialing opened April 24, 2021; mandatory dialing began October 24, 2021, enforced through each carrier’s rolling cut rather than a flash cut; carriers had until July 15, 2022 to finish, and 988 went live as a dialable number on July 16, 2022.

That is the plan NANPA’s database shows for 940 today: ten digits for every local call, home code or neighboring, 1 plus ten for toll, and 1 plus ten accepted on local calls at each provider’s discretion. It is the only change the code’s dialing rules have ever seen.

Room until 2049, and no docket anywhere

Fourth quarter of 2049: that is where the April 2026 edition of NANPA’s NPA Exhaust Analysis — the 2026-1 study, worked from utilization and prefix data as of March 1, 2026 — puts 940’s last assignable prefix, four quarters beyond the October 2025 forecast, on what NANPA logs as reduced historical and projected demand. The longer arc is steeper: the October 2023 study had 940 exhausting in the second quarter of 2043, and five revisions later the horizon has moved six and a half years, with a single two-quarter pullback in October 2025 as the only step backward.

Set against the rest of Texas, 940 sits at the exact middle of the table. Eight Texas entries are projected to run out sooner — 956 first in 2029, then 254 and 806 in 2032, followed by the Dallas, Houston, Fort Worth and Austin pools and the 903 pair — and eight later, from 409 in 2051 out to 432 in 2089. Corpus Christi’s 361, nudged from 4Q 2048 to 4Q 2049 by NANPA’s July 6, 2026 revision, lands in the identical quarter.

That July 6 update touched four Texas forecasts — 210/726, 361, 830 and 979 — and left 940 where April put it. NANPA’s relief-planning status report dated August 30, 2026 has twelve names on it and 940 is not one; the 36-month exhaust watch list holds three, and the only Texas name on it is 956, where relief planning opened June 23, 2026. The database flags 940 for neither jeopardy nor relief planning.

When the day comes, the remedy will not be another split. The industry default has been the overlay for two decades — the reasoning is walked through in our guide to how area codes work — so a second code, when needed, would layer onto the same 25 counties with every existing 940 number untouched, and since the dialing plan is already ten digits, residents would not change a single habit.

What a 940 display does in Wichita Falls and Denton

Two markets share the code and they behave differently on the phone. Denton sits inside the metroplex, so a 940 there reads as the local exception among the Dallas and Fort Worth numbers a resident sees daily. Wichita Falls and the Red River towns see far fewer metro calls, and a 940 on the screen reads as a neighbor rather than a stranger; our local presence dialing guide puts figures on what that recognition does to answer rates.

The display is still only a display. Caller ID spoofing can dress any call in North Texas digits, which is why the analytics engines now weigh the STIR/SHAKEN attestation riding with the call rather than the digits themselves.

SIPNEX works on that side of the line: an FCC-licensed carrier holding its own authorization, provisioning Texas DID numbers by rate center — 940 exchanges among them as inventory allows — and delivering them over SIP trunking to whatever is already on your floor, PBX or dialer. Outbound calls are signed at A-level attestation under SIPNEX’s own STIR/SHAKEN certificate, SIPNEX is registered in the FCC’s Robocall Mitigation Database, and toll-free numbers ride SIPNEX’s own RespOrg registration.

Reader questions on the 940 area code

Which cities are in the 940 area code?

Wichita Falls and Denton lead, with Gainesville, Decatur, Vernon, Graham, Mineral Wells, Bowie and Childress across the rest of the map. The boundary is the one drawn in Planning Letter PL-NANP-034 of January 22, 1997, which handed the northern 25 counties of the old 817 to the new code; the Red River forms the northern edge, and the whole territory keeps Central Time. Every Texas code, this one included, is indexed in our Texas area codes directory.

When did the 940 area code start?

May 25, 1997, at 12:01 a.m. EDT — the same morning 254 split off the south side of 817. NANPA had assigned the code on January 22, 1997, the day Bellcore issued PL-NANP-034. Callers could still reach 940 numbers by dialing 817 until August 24, 1997, when the permissive period ended and the 940-955-8378 test line was disconnected.

Do I need to dial ten digits in the 940 area code?

Yes — every local call in 940 has taken ten digits since October 24, 2021. The change came from the 988 crisis-line transition set out in NANPA Planning Letter PL-556: 940 used 988 as a working prefix and still allowed seven-digit dialing, so it joined 81 other codes in dropping seven digits. Toll calls take 1 plus ten, and providers may accept 1 plus ten on local calls as well.

Does the 940 area code have an overlay?

No. 940 has never been overlaid or split since it was created, and NANPA has no relief work open on it. Its projected exhaust is the fourth quarter of 2049 in the April 2026 study, which leaves roughly two decades before a second code comes up for discussion. The dialing plan is already ten digits, so an eventual overlay would change nothing about how residents dial.

Is a 940 number tied to a Wichita Falls or Denton address?

Only to the rate center, not to a street. A 940 number is issued from an exchange such as Wichita Falls or Denton and rings wherever the trunk terminates. SIPNEX provisions Texas DID numbers by rate center and delivers them over SIP to any location, subject to the inventory a given rate center holds at order time.

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Between the Red River and the top of the metroplex, one code has done the job for twenty-nine years without a second one in sight. Three things SIPNEX adds to that: 940 rate-center numbers under its own FCC carrier license, SIP trunking that lands them wherever your team works, and A-level attestation riding on each outbound call. Current rates, the contact team, and (833) 665-2220 are the ways in.