and the Eastern Shore would get the new area code, area code 410, while western and southern Maryland—including the Washington suburbs—would remain with the 301 area code. Bell Atlantic (now Verizon), the largest telephone provider in the region, allowed the western part of the state to retain 301 in order to keep the large number of federal agencies on the Maryland side of the Washington area from having to change their numbers. On the other side of the Potomac River, many of the same factors resulted in most of the old 703 territory outside of Northern Virginia split off as area code 540 in 1995. While Maryland would have needed a second area code at some point due to rapid growth in the Washington and Baltimore suburbs, it is very likely that the immediate need for another area code would have been staved off had it been possible to assign more 301 numbers to the Baltimore area before 1990. Area code 410 officially entered service on October 6, 1991; it was initially implemented in permissive-dialing mode, not as a flash-cut, with the 10-digit dialing scheme coming in for local calls across the new 301/410 boundary. The split largely followed metro lines. However, slivers of Anne Arundel and Carroll counties, as well as much of western Howard County, stayed in 301 even though these counties reckoned as part of the Baltimore area. Conversely, slivers of Frederick County, a Washington exurb, switched to 410. Effective November 1, 1991, ten-digit dialing was required when calling a different area code in Maryland. Although the split was intended to be a long-term solution, within five years 410 was already close to exhaustion due to the proliferation of cell phones and pagers, particularly in and around Baltimore. To solve this problem, area code 443 was overlaid onto the 410 territory on July 1, 1997. Overlays were a new concept at the time, and had met resistance because of the requirement for ten-digit dialing. However, the alternative would have been a split that would have forced residents of either Baltimore or the Eastern Shore to change their numbers for the second time in a decade. By 2011, the 410/443 area was once again running out of numbers because of the continued proliferation of cell phones. To spare residents another number change to a new area code, a third overlay code, area code 667, was implemented on March