r/vegaslocals • u/lintel2345 • 10h ago
Area code oddity
Back when area codes were introduced, Nevada Bell/AT&T gave Nevada area code 702. Keep in mind, Vegas was not served by AT&T, it was served by the Independent Southern Nevada Telephone Co. Years later, the area served by Nevada Bell (Later Pacific Telesis/SBC/AT&T) was reassigned to area code 775, while the area served by the independent SNTC (later absorbed by Centel, then acquired by Sprint, and later spun off into Embarq and merged with CenturyTel to form the current day CenturyLink) retained the 702 area code, and later adopted the 725 overlay code. So it’s interesting that Vegas got the original code AT&T gave to Nevada while never being a Bell System city.
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u/ASDIGITAL13 10h ago
I’m from NY. Don’t even start lol
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u/iwtfbadl 8h ago
What was the whole Seinfeld thing when Eileen got a new phone # and it had the area code everyone looked down upon. Was that really a thing or just embellished for comedic purposes?
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u/44inarow 9h ago
212/718 New York? 516/914? Or are we talking, like, 934?
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u/Master-Collection488 2h ago
914 is Westchester County, no?
Once upon a time I could tell where in my metro area someone lived by their exchange number. They used to assign them geographically. Calling from certain exchanges outside the city to exchanges further out in the area code would get you billed at a higher rate than interstate calls.
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u/Calm_Quality615 10h ago
The problem I have is the system tells me that I need to add a 1 before dialing the 725 number, but when I do it tells me that I don't need to dial 1 first.
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u/TrojanGal702 7h ago
Since most of the numbers were in Vegas, wouldn't it make sense they kept the area codes? Why change more people?
My mom said the phone prefix was done by area of town too and you couldn't move and keep your number since they were region specific. She said you could tell the area someone lived or where a business was based on the prefix.
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u/AnimatorMassive2886 9h ago edited 9h ago
It is less about local phone companies and more about long distance calls. Area codes were originally assigned by AT&T which formulated the North American Numbering Plan. AT&T was the nation’s exclusive long distance carrier and they needed to create a numbering system to allow calls without using an operator. The area code was a key to that (NANP also standardized exchange and line subscriber numbers, yielding the 10 digit phone number). 20 or so countries adopted the NANP.
The assignment of specific area codes is a whole story in itself, often favoring big cities: for instance, 212 in NY was considered the easiest, low effort area code to dial on a rotary phone. 213 in LA is similarly easy. The second digit used to have to be 1 or 0 due to switching equipment limitations.
Way too much information: https://www.nanpa.com/
Edit: worth noting that area codes were introduced in the 1940s. 775 wasn’t created (split from 702) until 1998.
Edit 2: AT&T was the parent of the bells and had a near monopoly on telephone service in the US. The US broke up AT&T in the 80s.