TELEPHONE AREA CODES IN NEW YORK CITY
-----------------------------------
John Pazmin-o
NYSkies Astronomy Inc
nyskies@nyskies.org
www.nyskies.org
2017 May 3
Introduction
----------
On 1 May 2017 TR&T and Verizon advised that a new, the seventh,
telephone area code will start up in New York City. it is '332', to
open on 10 June 2017. All new NYC phone nymbers will be assigned
within it without disturbing current phone numbers.
Readers remember several previous area codes for the Citym such as
the first new one back in 1984, '718'. A few readers remember when
area code '212' first allowed directy dialing long-distance calls in
the mid 1960s.
Before then LD calls were requested thru the AT&T switchvoard
operator, obtained by dialing '0'. She -- operators were almost all
women in those years -- manually wired her switchboard to tie the
remote phone to the caller's phone. Occasionally she explained this
task will take a while and offered to call back when the connections
were lined up.
Because of the manual involvement, a LD call was costly. In many
businesses an employee had to get prior permission before placing a LD
call in the course of duty. Commonly a person treated a received LD
cal with special attention, perhaps an emergency or assignment.
I compile here a history of telephone area codes for the City.
It is assembled from various sources in the web and ancient paper
material. Because it seems that news area codes will continue to add
to those already in New York City, all discussion here is addiurnate
only as at mid 2017.
Origin of area codes
-----------------
During World War II AT&T's Bell Labs invented a mechanism to
automaticly connect a calling phone to its receiving phone across
local calling zones, a long-distance connection, without intricate
hook-up by the operator. Until then when an operator got a long-
distance request she connected her switchboard in a chain from the
caller to the receiver.
The new method mapped the United States into zones, each with a
three-digit number. This number was a prefix to the receiver's phone
number.
The caller still asked the operator for the LD call, but now she
keyed in the appropriate prefix on her switchboard. This did away with
the tedium of hand-wiring the connection. The prefix was only for
internal AT&T use. The LD caller did not know about ut.
The original set of prefixes started yp in 1947 October 1 with 86
zones in the US. For technical and historical reasons the scheme
covered also Canada, Quebec, and British islands in the Atlantic and
Caribbean. The original numbering scheme was called the North American
Numbering Plan, NANP. Over the next decades the plan was extended to
other Caribbean islands, US overseas territories, and Alaska & Hawaii
when they entered statehood.
The zones were officially called Numbering Plan Areas, NPA, each
with a NPA code. Almost immediately the name was shortened to 'area
code' or AC.
When AT&T was diffracted in the 1980s the US FCC arranged the NANP
system into a separate company, the North American Numbering Plan
Administration.
Direct Distance Dialing
--------------------
The ultimate purpose of area codes was to let callers directly
dial LD phones. Such a system eliminates the burden on the switchboard
operator and opens LD calling as a more casual and spontaneous
service. Testing of caller-initiated LD calls, Direct Distance Dialing,
began on 1951 November 10 between Englewood NJ and Alameda CA. AT&T
arranged for the mayors of these towns converse by Englewood dialing
Alameda with the area code method.
Tests of the new system, Direct Distance Dialing, DDD, continues
thru the 1950s. During these tests a prototype dialing method was
installed between New York City and New Jersey. A caller in the City
could directly reach a phone in New Jersey by dialing 1 plus the New
Jersey phone number. Only certain exchanges in northern New
Jersey,were hooked up into this program. A New Jersey caller, in one
of these particular exchanges, could reach a City phone by dialing 11
plus the City phone number. Both sets of phones were in the then
hidden area codes 201 (NJ) and 212 (NYC).
Direct Distance Dialing spread gradually in the 1950s thruout the
US, at first in the larger metropolitan regions. That's when area
codes were released for caller use, as the necessary prefix for
dialing long distance calls.
Every so often AT&T bannered the addition of more towns or states
and a map of area codes in the company's phone book ws slowly filled
in with DDD-accessible regions.
Numbering scheme
--------------
The area code number was a simple logical, almost elegant, system.
An early map of the area code zones was actually a quite attractive
graphic. No one could imagine that before the 20th century was over
this nitid plan would fall apart.
A whole state was given a code with middle digit 0. A portion of a
state, typicly large towns and metropolitan areas, got a prefix with
middle digit 1. The map had a single x0y code for entire states and a
bunch of x1y codes for partitioned states. A state did not have both
x0y and x1y codes.
New York State had the most partitions, five, each with its own
x1y code. The next greatest number of codes, four, went to Illinois,
Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Texas.
The x, first, digit was assigned from the volume of telephone
traffic in each area. The volume of traffic was binned into eight
ranges, 2 thru 9, with 2 for the highest and 9 for the lowest. 0 and 1
were invalid values for the x place in the code.
The logic behind the x value was that calls to high traffic zones
should need a short-dial, short stroke of the finger in the
telephone's rotary dial. A low traffic LD call could live with a long-
dial, longer arc on the dial.
The y, third, digit was simply the order of the code in each bin
of x values. Number 0 was not allowed in y place of a x0y code and
both 0 and 1 were avoided in a x1y code.
This NANP provided for 152 area codes, of which 86 were initially
used. The remaining ones were salted away with no certain idea what to
do with them.
The first whole-state area code was assigned to New Jersey, home
of Bell labs, 201. The first partial-state code was given to New York
City, 212.
Exchanges
-------
By World War II AT&T phone numbers stabilized at a 7-character
form. The first three were the exchange, a trunk line homed at one of
AT&T's dispatching depots or exchange houses. The last four were the
line or station number, 9,999 per exchange. Line '0000' was reserved,
not issued to customers. A dispatching depot could work tens of
exchanges, trunk lines, handling myriads of phone numbers.
The exchange was named for a geographic or historical word
associated with the exchange house, The first two letters of this name
were the first two chars of the exchange. The third place was a digit
chosen to avoid conflict with other exchange names with the same two
initial chars.
The usual way to state a phone number was two alphas and one digit
for the exchange, then a hyphen, and then four digits for the line,
such as CO4-1164 for the 1164th line in the COrtlandt exchange.
An inspection of the telephone dial, or keypad on today's phones,
reveals that the 0 and 1 spot have no alphas attached to them. Because
an exchange starts with two letters, an exchange can not have 0 or 1
in its first or second place. These places may have numbers 2 thru 9,
standing for alphass attached to them.
The telephone network needed a means to recognize that the initial
chars dialed into it was an area code for a LD call and not an
exchange for a local call. The solution was to make the middle digit
of the area code a 0 or 1, distinguishing it from an exchange.
Some restrictions
---------------
Certain combinations of area code digits were reserved for special
functions, not as a prefix for LD calls. Codes x11 were complete phone
numbers, like 911 for emergency medical and rescue services and, for
New York City, 311 for municipal agencies.
x00 codes are whole-country LD prefixes, not confined to a
specific region. 800 is for free-call numbers where the recipient pays
the phone charges. 900 is for pay-calls where the recipient charges a
fee on top of the phone company charge.
x10 codes were mostly unused but 710 was for nation-wide teletype
service. This is by the 21st century about dead, freeing this code for
other uses.
Area codes can not start with 0 or 1 due to technical imitations
in the telephone apparatus. The first digit is 2 thru 9.
New aera codes
------------
The 1947 NANP made 152 area codes. Under its formula the code
may have 2-9 in the first digit, 0 or 1 in th 2nd, and 0-9 in the 3rd.
Codes x00 and x10 were for special services. Codes x11 were not used,
being complete phone numbers by themselfs. Subtracting all 8 of these
leaves (8 x 2 x 10) - 8 = 152 codes. 86 were enough to fill out the
United States and certain adjacent countries. The unused codes were
put away with no clear need for them.
By the 1970s some areas were running out of open phones, like in
New York City. Its 212 area was rapidly filling up, mostly from newly
installed data networks and direct dialing to individual business
phones. A new cause for the swelling demand for phones was the special
services offered by the new non-AT&T telephone companies, each
requiring access to ample stocks of phone numbers for their own
customers.
The way to generate a supply of new open phone numbers was to
create a new area code. Each code controls its own full stock of
phones, separate from those of existing codes.
At first new area codes came from the unused original ones. To
avail of these open codes the nitid scheme of whole/partial star and
telephone traffic was jettisoned. Any handy code was put in place in
the required area. Unused codes of form x10 were taken for new areas.
710, originally for teletype, was released into the pool of open
codes. Within five or so years some states were covered by a mix of
x0y and x1y codes.
NANPA, created from the former AT&T in 1984, revised the code
rules to allow almost any combination of digits. The code still may
not start with 0 or 1. The 2nd digit may be 0 thru 8, missing out 9.,
to have a small reserve of codes for internal use with the same
exclusion of x11 codes, there now are (8 x 9 x 10) - 8 = 712 codes.
The 800 code for nation-wide free-call phones was extended by
allowing new 8xx codes for this function. 811 and 899 were held back,
leaving now 8 free-call area codes.
Splits
---
An area code can be added to an existing region by a split or an
overlay. In a split the original zone is divided geographicly into two
parts. One part keeps the original code. The other takes on the new
code.
Telephones in each part remain the same but hose in the new part
are prefixed with the new code. The ones in the original part keep
their old prefix.
The split generates a pool of new phones by segregating the old
set of phones in the region into two partially-full sets. A phone is
one part now is a hole in the other, open for assignment. This pool is
supplemental to the main pool of open phones in the original area,
which was depleting already with the attachment of new phones.
It was a common practice in AT&T to allow callers in both areas to
continue dialing just the 7-digit phone number, as if they were still
in one code. This favor, called 'permissive dialing', works as long as
there are no phones duplicated across the two areas. Instantly holes
in one area are filling up with new phones, these new phones duplicate
existing phones in the other area. At that moment, even tho not
mandatory, it is necessary to include the area code when calling these
duplicated phones.
After several year every one in each region knew enough duplicated
phones to start dialing the area code on his own.
Overlays
------
In an overlay the new code is geographic coterminous with one or
more adjacent regions with old codes. No existing phones are altered.
They stay within their old area code. The new code is filled only with
brand-new phones, making good of the code's initially empty capacity.
Some early overlays were dedicated to new services such as mobile or
novocal devices. Others were for any new device, even vocal phones.
In an overlay the area code must be part of the dialing into it
because there is no legacy to allow its omission. This is why so
prevalently mobile devices require thee area code for all dialing,
even when it's still only optional in the original region.
Where there are both a split and an overlay in a geographic region,
callers may juggle their dialing practices between optional area code
for numbers that undergoed the split and required code for the new
numbers in the overlay. Many callers simply took to the use of area
code for all dialing.
Grace period
----------
When it is possible to stay with 7-digit dialing across two areas,
the phone company usually leaves callers alone for some grace period.
It reminds about the two codes and urges getting used to dialing with
them, but doesn't enforce the new dialing regimen.
In New York, and likely else where, there was a claim of unfair
competition by the non-AT&T phone companies. They, by the equipment
they built, required ten-digit dialing for all phones, mobile and
landline, while AT*T allowed seven-digit dialing for calls within an
area code. I can't recall active promotion of seven-digit dialing by
AT&T. It was just the way the company set up its network.T A&T argued
that its grace period was only temporary and would soon end. Then
after all numbers will require dialing with the area code.
Eventually, often with the addition of an other new code, it's
time to move to dialing all ten digits, three for the area code and
seven for the phone. After the mandatory 10-digit dialing takes
effect, a misdial triggers a phone company greeting to hang up and
dial again with the area code.
The 1980s
-------
On 1984 January 8, by Federal anti-trust action, AT&T broke apart
into about a dozen independent separate companies. Some were
designated for local phone service, the 'Baby Bells'. Others handled
other services such as long-distance calls. In addition, new non-AT&T
phone companies started up to offer service in competition against the
Baby Bells.
To provide phone service there new companies needed access to open
phone numbers. AT&T had to let these companies rent phone numbers but
there was a problem. The electromechanical circuits still prevalent in
AT&T restricted new phone numbers to a whole exchange. An exchange
handles 10,000 phones, even if the renting company didn't want so
many. Since the existing exchanges could mot be broken apart, there
suddenly was a need to create brand-new exchanges.
An other development was that AT&T was moving off of
electromechanical networks to electronic ones. The newly emerging
companies started with electronic networks. The electronic system
reduced the constraints on making new exchanges and area codes.
There was the beginning of widespread mobile phone service, where
often each person in a household had his own phone, and the rise of
data phones for the new home computers. These were extra phones in a
household to avoid hogging the vocal phone when transpiring data thru
the computer.
The diffraction of AT&T span off its North American Numbering Plan
to a new outfit, NANP Administration, NANPA. At first Lockheed Martin,
aerospace company in Colorado, ran it. Since then other firms took up
the service with the present contract expiring later in 2017.
NANPA's immediate first task was to work up new rules for new
codes and exchanges.
New exchanges
-----------
A traditional exchange was formed from a name associated with the
territory of its dispatching center. The first two chars were the
first two letters of the name. The earliest exchanges had as its third
char a digit corresponding to the third letter of the name. It soon
became impractical to hold to this rule and the third char is really a
conflict-breaker among exchanges with the same two initial letters.
In New York AT&T started to wean people from the exchange names
and move them toward an all-digit scheme. For example, the exchange
COrtlandt4 was cited as 264. New Yorkers didn't take easily to losing
their names!
When I was at school AT&T relabeled its public pay phones on the City
College campus with the all-digit phone numbers. Students made new
labels with the old AUdubon exchange name and carefully inserted them
into the dial plate of the pay phones. They stayed in place until the
next occasion that the phone was visited by AT&T maintenance crew. A
similar tactic was carried out for the MOrningside exchange at
Columbia University.
There is one concession that I know of. In 1960 two airliners, one
just after taking off from LaGuardia andd Idelwild (not yet renamed
Kennedy) airport, collided over Brooklyn. Wreckage rained down
centered over Sterling Street. The accident is still sometimes called
the Sterling Street disaster. The district is in the STeerling
exchange. AT&T, in memory of the accident, never tried to push off the
name for this exchange. over the following decades, as phone numbers
are removed and new ones added, the STerling exchange is fading into
history.
As charming and romantic as the exchange names were, thru
constrained the full capacity of an area code. Many valid letter-digit
combination were not used simply from want of a name for them.
Granted, some names seemed whimsical, like for my late ladylove at
BUtterrfield; an astronomy club at LEhigh. the natural history museum
at TRafalgar; friends at NIghtingale, TUlip, DIgby, REgemts,
TEmpleton, HYacinth, IVanhoe, ... . Even so, the capacity of an area
code, with all its working exchanges, was more like 5 to 6 million,
not the maximum capacity of 7.9 million, phones.
NANPA opened exchanges to all combinations of digits, with a few
simple exceptions. The exchange may not start with 0 or 1. Exchanges
of form x11 still were reserved for complete phone numbers. The
number of exchanges is now maxed out at 792. This is (8 x 10 x 10) -
(8 x11 numbers) = 792.
All brand-new exchanges are nameless. They are all-digit from the
start. While a name can be forced into the digits it is not
recognized by any phone service.
Each exchange can handle 9,999 phones, not 10 thousand because
line number 0000 is for internal use. The full count of phones per
area code is 792 x 9999 = 7,919,000.
Names come back!
--------------
It seemed that with the detachment of exchanges from names, and
all-digit dialing was the norm by the 1990s. telephones will son drop
letters from their dials and keypads.
But a new telephone service forced the letters to stay in place!
The non-AT&T companies offered vanity phone numbers, those whose
letter-equivalent spelled a word. This was typicly the name of the
customer or its product or service. The customer could ask for such a
number and, if it was still open, it was assigned to him. The customer
advertised the number as the word, like PILLOWS.
The classical dial and early keypads carried on each number three
letters, with 0 and 1 skipped. The same set of digits could spell out
several desired vanity words. There was a battle, with lawsuits, to
get hold of desired vanity number.
The 8 keys (2-9) with 3 letters each covered 24 letters. Since the
English alphabet has 26 letters, Q and Z were skipped. AT&T avoided
exchange names with these letters in the first or second place.
The absence of Q and Z made for fictitious exchange names, like
for movies or comics. A phone number in a film may be OZone2-3456,
with assurance that it could not conflict with a real phone.
When dialing a vanity phone, the telephone network 'sees' only the
digits corresponding to the letters. Also, once 7 digits were dialed,
the call was processed, even if more digits were sent out. This feature
allowed longer vanity names because only the first seven chars were
recognized. To some degree this alleviated the fight to capturing a
vanity number fitting into seven chars.
By the mid 1990s there was no longer a need to avoid Q and Z in
a vanity name. Only digits were sent to the phone grid. Newer
telephones were built with keypads carrying all 26 letters. The 7 key
has PQRS; 9 key, WXYZ. Vanity names like QUALITY and ZIG2ZAG could be
requested.
The need to include Q and Z in dialing was also driven by some
robot greetings for businesses. They ask to key in the name of the
desired person, department, service. The name could easily require the
letters Q and Z. To handle callers with classical keypads, the
greeting may note that for Q and Z key in 7 or 9.
1-Plus dialing
------------
Ten-digit dialing helped prevent misdialing duplicate numbers in
split areas.. This practice was fine when the switching center could
tell that the first three digits were in fact an area code and not a
local exchange. That's what the 0/1 in the second place of an area
code was for since no exchange could have 0 or 1 in that place.
When the new codes, made of almost all combinations of digits,
were introduced the area code looked like an exchange. There had to
be a way to alert the circuits that the stream of digits dialed started
with an area code. The solution was to add a new prefix, number 1, for
all dialing. The circuits sees this initial 1 and know the next three
are the area code, followed by the 7-digit local phone number. This
was known as '1-plus' or 'all-11' dialing.
Depending on the region, this dialing regimen was a shift from an
existing ten-digit dialing or was already the dialing scheme even the
expiration of a grace period. New York City went to 1-plus dialing when
its permissive dialing expired on 2003 February 4. The City did not
have a mandatory 10-digit system only an optional one.
Calls dialed with only 7-digits triggered a phone company greeting
to hang up and dial '1 plus area code and the phone number'.
Mobile phones and certain novocal devices may skip the 1 prefix,
leaving it as an option. This results from the particular phone
service being built up with 10-digit dialing. Since their equipment
recognized the sequence of numbers already, there was no need to
impose an extra prefix.
AC 212
----
New York City got its first area code on 1947 October 1 as one of
the initial86 codes set up by AT&T. For over a decade it was an
internal function of the switchboard operators. LD dialing by the
caller started on 1951 November 10 in area 201, New jErsey, as a test
run by Bell Labs. After a few years of more testing LD dialing opened
for caller use across the country starting in the mid 1950s.
Beginning in 1960 select exchanges in the City were opened for
Direct Distance Dialing. Direct Distance Dialing was highlighted at
the AT&T pavilion of the New York World's Fair. More exchanges were
hooked up until by 1965 the whole City enjoyed Direct Distance
Dialing.
Adjacent sections of the City region got their own codes, also on
1947 October 1: 516 for Long Island, 201 for New Jersey, 203 for
Connecticut, 914 for nearby upstate.
To call phones within the 212 area, only the7-digit phone number
was dialed. The area code was entered only for calling to other codes.
AC 718
----
The City's 212 area was split on 1984 September 1 into 212 and 718
codes. 212 stayed on Manhattan and in the Bronx. 718 covered Brooklyn,
Queens, Staten Island. Optional 10-digit dialing prevailed until 2003
February 1, when it was replaced by compulsory 1-plus dialing. There
was no compulsory 10-digit dialing for the City, as it was phased out
within the optional-area-code grace period.
Besides the very island of Manhattan, certain off-shore islands
associated with Manhattan stayed in 212. These include Liberty &
Ellis, Belmont (now U Thant), Governors, and Roosevelt.
On 1992 February 4 the Bronx was moved into 718 area to free up
phones for the rapidly-growing 212 area. This was also when new code
917 came on line.
The former 212 phones of the Bronx were now holes in 212 ready to
fill with new 212 phones. Eventually these 212 numbers duplicated the
Bronx 718 numbers. This situation started the long period of having to
dial 10 digits for certain phones and only 7 for others.
The incidence of a duplicate phone number comes with no notice and
spawns some hysterical episodes. In New York an astronomer in new area
718 on Staten Island suddenly got several calls per day for a bank's
customer office. The bank was in area 212 on Manhattan and moved its
customer office. It acquired a set of new phone numbers, one
duplicating the astronomer's.
The bank's advertising and publicity still showed the 7-digit
number, as it did for the indefinite past. Callers looked up the
number and dialed it. If the caller was in 212 area the call went thru
correctly. If in 718 the caller rang up the astronomer.
The astronomer revised the greeting on her anserfone to warn that
to reach this bank the caller must hang up and dial again with the 212
prefix. This reduced the influx of wrong calls but the couple per day
was still irritating.
The astronomer came up with a plot that was reasonable in the
1980s but is not recommended in today's climate of ID theft and
information hacking.
She pretended to be the bank!
She worked in business and know the lingo of finance and banking.
She politely spoke with the caller, wrote down his details, and
assured that the inquiry will be handled within ten days or so.
After collecting five or six callers, she did up a business letter
to the bank's manager with the caller information. She hinted that the
bank may have other phones duplicated between 212 and 718 and, hmmm,
what happens to the caller information disclosed at those phones?
Within a week the bank revamped its litterature and ads to include
212 with its phone numbers.
Marble Hill
---------
Marble Hill was a paeninsula at the northern ti The name probably
comes from the exposure of native Inwood marble, occasionally mined for
building stone. p of Manhattan. The Harlem River wrapped around it in
a hair-pin curve.
The sharp tight bend in Harlem River by the late 19th century grew
into a hazard to shipping. In 1895 the City arranged to have the
paeninsula cut off, roughly in line with the adjacent Manhattan
shoreline, to make a straight path for navigation. The old water
course was filled in and opened for development.
The formal legal definition of 'Manhattan' included the far, Bronx
side, shore of Harlem River as it existed in colonial time. The line
followed the hair-pin loop. This boundary line was never updated after
Marble Hill was severed fro Manhattan and attached to the Bronx!
Residents and business on the hill are 'on Manhattan'. The Bronx
treats them as part of Manhattan-occupied territory. Every president
of the Bronx puts out the goal of taking back the 'Sudetenland' of
Marble Hill.
Truly riotous episodes erupt over the decades. One is a school
that was built in the filled-in zone, straddling the Manhattan-Bronx
border. it flies the Manhattan flag on one side of the building and
the Bronx flag on the other side.
When telephone service was set up in the Bronx it was natural to
wire up Marble Hill into the network of the Bronx and not string wires
across or under Harlem River to the Manhattan phone grid. This was no
problem since either there was no area code system or there was the
one 212 code for the entire City.
When the Bronx shifted into 718 area, Marble Hill went with it!
Ever since then Marble Hill takes on all the changes in phone service
as the rest of the Bronx.
AC 917
----
On 1992 February 4 code 917 was installed as an overlay on both
212 and 718 area, all over the whole City. It was just about the last
of the original codes left and was reserved at first for mobile and
nonvocal phones. Existing mobile/nonvocal phones were moved from
212/718 into 917. Because this was a different code, like in an other
town, 10-digit dialing was required. At the same time the Bronx was
shifted from 212 area into 718. 212 now covers only [most of]
Manhattan.
Mobile phones aren't tied to a specific territory. They may do a
call from any where in the country. Mobile phone systems wee built to
require 10-digit dialing for all calls, even those within the 917
area. When 1-plus dialing began, it did not apply to most mobile
phones. The initial 1 was tossed and the remaining ten digits were
processed.
In the mid 1990s the US FCC banned new codes for specific services
but grandfathered 917. As it happened, new codes were opened that
handled mobile phones. Leftover open phones in 917 were issued to any
type of new phone.
AC 646
----
Code 646 opened as an overlay of 212 on 1999 July 1 to handle
phones spilling over 212's capacity. There just were almost no open
phones in 212. Many new phones were mobile phones, a service was
exploding in the late 1990s, causing some people to think 646 is a
dedicated mobile phone code. it was merely the case that most new
phones were mobile, not landline, phones.
Altho there are by now absolutely no open phones left in 212 it is
possible to obtain a new 212 phone number! As homes and businesses
move they take on new phone numbers in the newer codes. The old 212
numbers are turned back to the phone company.
Firms sprang up to watch for released 212 numbers and sign up for
them. Usually they come in blocks, like for a business with many 212
phones. The phone 'broker' sells these numbers, for this mother of all
codes, to new customer.
When signing up for mobile phone service, a contact phone is asked
for customer service calls. If the offered number is in 212 area the
mobile phone is tied to the 646 code. A 718 number puts its mobile
phone in the other new code 347.
AC 347
----
Code 347 overlays 718 and started on 1999 October 1. Like 646 it
handles new phones spilling from 718. Its growth is not as rapid as
for 646 but in the 2-thous the rate of new hookups ramped up. This is
probably due to the massive influx of data-intensive companies into
Brooklyn and Queens. Like for 646 a mobile phone is given a 347 number
for a contact phone in 718.
AC 929
---
This is an overlay of an overlay! I929 started on 2001 April 16.
It sits on 917 area, which was starting to exhaust its remaining open
numbers. New phones go into 929 while existing 917 phones are not
affected.
1-plus dialing
AC 332
---
Code 332 starts on 2017 June 10 as an overlay of 212/646. As 646
phone numbers are used up, new phones are given 332 numbers. Current
phones are left alone.
Conclusion
--------
Most people have no inkling of how and why the telephone works.
They key in a bunch of digits and, presto!, they're talking to an
other person tens, hundreds, thousands of kilometers away as clearly
as if that person was by their side. It took more than six decades to
hammer out the long-distance area code system and to expand it to
keep up with the swelling demand for new phones.
If all seven of New York's area codes fill up to their capacity of
7.9 million numbers, the City would be handling over 55 million
phones! This is probably all the telephones in the entire United States
when the North American Numbering Plan started in 1947.
A parallel development was the hook-up of telephones in New York.
Considering only the hard-wired phones, not wireless ones, AT&T and
partner Verizon estimate that the length of telephone wire placed in
New York (whole city) is about 60 million kilometers! This is the
distance from Earth to Mars at the 2018 opposition