984 Area Code – Raleigh, North Carolina: Location, Time Zone & History

Raleigh, Durham, and Chapel Hill's Research Triangle carries two area codes stacked on the same territory. 984 was put into service by NANPA on April 30, 2012 as an all-services overlay on 919, arriving after a permissive ten-digit dialing period that began October 1, 2011 and after 919's original number supply approached exhaustion. Because it is an overlay rather than a geographic split, longtime residents and businesses often kept their original 919 numbers while newer lines were issued 984, and the two codes have coexisted across the same footprint ever since.

The 919/984 territory covers Wake, Durham, and Orange counties -- home to roughly 1.6 million people -- along with cities including Raleigh, Durham, Chapel Hill, Cary, Apex, Wake Forest, Garner, Sanford, Goldsboro, and Oxford. Raleigh serves as North Carolina's state capital, giving the numbering plan area a strong government presence alongside its economic identity.

The Triangle's rapid tech-driven growth since 984's 2012 activation reflects its standing as a research and innovation hub: Research Triangle Park, one of the largest research parks in the country, anchors technology and biotechnology employers such as IBM, Cisco, and SAS Institute, while Duke University, UNC-Chapel Hill, and North Carolina State University drive higher education and pharmaceutical research. Raleigh is also home to the NHL's Carolina Hurricanes at PNC Arena.