Understanding Your Local Calling Area

To find exchanges in your local calling area, choose below:

• Chester
• Hillsboro Upper Village
• Washington
• Weare

How can you avoid the shock of an unexpectedly high phone bill? GSC has compiled some guidelines to help you:

1. Know your Local Calling Area. Your local calling area is the geographic area that you may call without incurring a toll charge. It includes:

All calls to numbers with the same first three digits of the seven digit telephone number. For example, if your number begins with 887 you can call anyone else within New Hampshire whose telephone number begins with 887 without incurring a toll charge.

All calls to numbers in your extended local calling area. This varies from exchange to exchange but most customers can make toll free calls to all telephone exchanges contiguous to their telephone exchange. Our Chester (887) and Weare (529) exchange customers can also call Fairpoint's Manchester exchanges without a toll charge.

Please note that exchange boundaries do not match town boundaries. Some towns, such as Hampstead have more than one telephone exchange and some telephone exchanges, such as Chester (887) include more than one town.

Above is a list of the local calling areas shown by GSC telephone exchange.

2. Don't assume a telephone number is local. In areas where there are many businesses, (such as Manchester, Derry, and Goffstown), new telephone companies compete with Fairpoint for local telephone service. These new companies assign their own telephone exchanges. In some cases, calls to these exchanges are not free even though the person that you are calling is located in a town where you have traditionally been able to call for free, for example Manchester. To clear up the confusion, you can refer to the tool above, or call our Customer Service office at 603-529-9911.