Re: Editing of area codes

[Douglas Handy <dhandy1@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Rob,

>Is it valid to have an area code beginning with a 1 in the United States?

As others have mentioned, there currently are not any.  The old NANPA rule was
that first digit must be 2-9 and the second either 0 or 1.  This allowed old
phone switches and payphones etc to quickly determine the type of call based on
the first few digits dialed;

  0xxxx         Operator assisted
  10xxx            Direct dial using LD provider with code xxx
  1xxxx         Direct dial using LD provider PIC's to line

  x0x or x1x    NPA aka Area code (ie expect 10 digits)
  x2x -  x9x    NXX aka exchange (ie expect 7 digits)

But the explosion in the number of phone numbers required due to cell phones,
pagers, distinctive ring alternate numbers, fax and modem lines, etc made lots
of exchanges start running out of available phone numbers.  This necessitated
new area codes, but they were in short supply too because they could only be 20x
to 90x, or 21x to 29x.  In addition, several of those were reserved such as all
codes ending in x00 and x11.  Most of the x00 -- except 800 -- were reserved for
phone company use, while the x11 were special 3-digit numbers where 411 and 911
are the most widely known.

Because of the need for more area codes, NANPA lifted the rule where the middle
digit had to be 0 or 1, and it caused much gnashing of teeth and made lots of
existing hardware obsolete.

I would be surprised if they relaxed the rule about the first digit though.  The
presence of the 0 or 1 as the first digit is still very much relied upon to
determine how to route the call.  If the NANPA changed again to allow them as
leading digits, there would be much more wailing and gnashing of teeth from
equipment vendors, the COCOT industry, etc.

I'm not guaranteeing it can't happen, but it would be a method of last resort.
I used to "program" COCOT payphones for call routing and pricing during the '90s
when they needed hardware upgrades in order to accomodate the new area code
rules.  They definately still used a leading 0 and 1 to know the number was
neither a NPA or NXX code.

Doug