Area code 816 is a telephone

area code A telephone numbering plan is a type of numbering scheme used in telecommunication to assign telephone numbers to subscriber telephones or other telephony endpoints. Telephone numbers are the addresses of participants in a telephone network, re ...

in the

North American Numbering Plan The North American Numbering Plan (NANP) is a telephone numbering plan for twenty-five regions in twenty countries, primarily in North America and the Caribbean. This group is historically known as World Zone 1 and has the international calling ...

(NANP) for Kansas City, St. Joseph, and all or part of 15 surrounding counties in northwestern

Missouri Missouri is a U.S. state, state in the Midwestern United States, Midwestern region of the United States. Ranking List of U.S. states and territories by area, 21st in land area, it is bordered by eight states (tied for the most with Tennessee ...

. The numbering plan area originally comprised most of the northern and western two-thirds of the state, bordering with

Arkansas Arkansas ( ) is a landlocked state in the South Central United States. It is bordered by Missouri to the north, Tennessee and Mississippi to the east, Louisiana to the south, and Texas and Oklahoma to the west. Its name is from the ...

Illinois Illinois ( ) is a state in the Midwestern United States. Its largest metropolitan areas include the Chicago metropolitan area, and the Metro East section, of Greater St. Louis. Other smaller metropolitan areas include, Peoria and Roc ...

Iowa Iowa () is a U.S. state, state in the Midwestern United States, Midwestern region of the United States, bordered by the Mississippi River to the east and the Missouri River and Big Sioux River to the west. It is bordered by six states: Wiscon ...

Kansas Kansas () is a state in the Midwestern United States. Its capital is Topeka, and its largest city is Wichita. Kansas is a landlocked state bordered by Nebraska to the north; Missouri to the east; Oklahoma to the south; and Colorado to ...

Nebraska Nebraska () is a state in the Midwestern region of the United States. It is bordered by South Dakota to the north; Iowa to the east and Missouri to the southeast, both across the Missouri River; Kansas to the south; Colorado to the so ...

, and Oklahoma, but has been reduced to a ribbon bordering Kansas. 816 is one of the original 86 area codes created in 1947.

History

When the American Telephone and Telegraph Company (AT&T) created a universal North American telephone numbering plan for

Operator Toll Dialing Operator Toll Dialing was a telephone call routing and toll-switching system for the Bell System and the independent telephone companies in the United States and Canada that was developed in the 1940s. It automated the switching and billing of lon ...

in 1947, Missouri was divided into two numbering plan areas (NPAs). Area code 816 served points generally north and west of

Columbia Columbia may refer to: * Columbia (personification), the historical female national personification of the United States, and a poetic name for America Places North America Natural features * Columbia Plateau, a geologic and geographic region in ...

and Jefferson City, while area code 314 served the eastern third of the state, including St. Louis. In 1951, a third NPA with area code 417 was created for southwestern Missouri, including the cities of Branson, Joplin, and Springfield. This reduced 816 to the northern third of Missouri, including the

Kansas City metropolitan area The Kansas City metropolitan area is a bi-state metropolitan area anchored by Kansas City, Missouri. Its 14 counties straddle the border between the U.S. states of Missouri (9 counties) and Kansas (5 counties). With and a population of more ...

. Despite roughly doubling the population in the

during the second half of the 20th century, area code 816 retained its 1951 boundaries for 45 years. By late 1996, the proliferation of

cell phones A mobile phone, cellular phone, cell phone, cellphone, handphone, hand phone or pocket phone, sometimes shortened to simply mobile, cell, or just phone, is a portable telephone that can make and receive calls over a radio frequency link whil ...

and market reforms related to

deregulation Deregulation is the process of removing or reducing state regulations, typically in the economic sphere. It is the repeal of governmental regulation of the economy. It became common in advanced industrial economies in the 1970s and 1980s, as a r ...

by the

Telecommunications Act of 1996 The Telecommunications Act of 1996 is a United States federal law enacted by the 104th United States Congress on January 3, 1996, and signed into law on February 8, 1996, by President Bill Clinton. It primarily amended Chapter 5 of Title 47 of t ...

required an additional area code for northern Missouri. On April 10, 1997, Southwestern Bell declared a Jeopardy Situation with the Missouri Public Service Commission (MPSC), which oversees telecommunications in the state, and the North American Numbering Plan Administration (NANPA). On July 28, 1997, Bellcore and the NANPA, announced an area code split, in which the Kansas City metropolitan area and the St. Joseph area would retain area code 816, while the remainder of the NPA would receive the new

area code 660 Area code 660 is the telephone area code in the North American Numbering Plan (NANP) for the northern and western part of the U.S. state of Missouri. It was created on October 12, 1997, in an area code split of the 816 numbering plan area (NP ...

. Area code 660 comprised the rural eastern and northwestern portions of the then-current 816 area to minimize disruption to subscribers in the more densely populated urban areas. The rate centers of Lexington (259) and Warrensburg (429) moved to 660, despite being generally considered a part of the Kansas City area. On June 4, 1997, the MPSC announced the split for October 12, 1997, with a permissive dialing period ending on April 19, 1998, during which calls could be placed with either area code. In 2000, the Missouri PSC announced plans to create an overlay plan for the numbering plan area. On February 20, 2001, the overlay was approved by the North American Numbering Plan Administration (NANPA), by assigning area code 975 for service starting October 20, 2001, which was later postponed to May 5, 2002. The subsequent implementation of code preservation measures, such as

number pooling Number pooling is a method of reallocating telephony numbering space in the North American Numbering Plan, primarily in growth areas in the United States. Instead of allocating blocks of ten thousand numbers to each carrier in each community, a bl ...

, eliminated the immediate need for additional central office prefixes, prompting the MPSC to suspend implementation indefinitely. Despite Kansas City's continued growth, the Kansas City area was served by only 816 for over twenty additional years. Prior to October 2021, area code 816 had telephone numbers assigned for the central office code 988. In 2020, ''988'' was designated nationwide as a dialing code for the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline, which created a conflict for exchanges that permit seven-digit dialing. This area code was therefore scheduled to transition to ten-digit dialing by October 24, 2021. An October 2021 exhaust analyses by the NANPA projected central office code exhaustion by 2023. As a result, an overlay with area code 975 is scheduled for October 13, 2023.

Service area

Major cities

* Blue Springs *

Gladstone William Ewart Gladstone ( ; 29 December 1809 – 19 May 1898) was a British statesman and Liberal politician. In a career lasting over 60 years, he served for 12 years as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, spread over four non-con ...

* Grandview *

Independence Independence is a condition of a person, nation, country, or state in which residents and population, or some portion thereof, exercise self-government, and usually sovereignty, over its territory. The opposite of independence is the s ...

* Kansas City * Lee's Summit *

Liberty Liberty is the ability to do as one pleases, or a right or immunity enjoyed by prescription or by grant (i.e. privilege). It is a synonym for the word freedom. In modern politics, liberty is understood as the state of being free within society fr ...

* North Kansas City *

Platte City Platte City is a city in and the county seat of Platte County, Missouri within the United States. The population was 4,691 at the 2010 census. The city is part of the Kansas City metropolitan area. History Platte City was founded by Zadock ...

* Raymore * Raytown * Smithville * St. Joseph * Kearney

Other cities

Archie Archie is a masculine given name, a diminutive of Archibald. It may refer to: People Given name or nickname *Archie Alexander (1888–1958), African-American mathematician, engineer and governor of the US Virgin Islands * Archie Blake (mathemati ...

* Belton *

Cleveland Cleveland ( ), officially the City of Cleveland, is a city in the U.S. state of Ohio and the county seat of Cuyahoga County. Located in the northeastern part of the state, it is situated along the southern shore of Lake Erie, across the U ...

* Freeman * Garden City *

Greenwood Green wood is unseasoned wood. Greenwood or Green wood may also refer to: People * Greenwood (surname) Settlements Australia * Greenwood, Queensland, a locality in the Toowoomba Region * Greenwood, Western Australia, a suburb of Perth C ...

* Harrisonville * Holden * Peculiar * Pleasant Hill *

Savannah A savanna or savannah is a mixed woodland-grassland (i.e. grassy woodland) ecosystem characterised by the trees being sufficiently widely spaced so that the canopy does not close. The open canopy allows sufficient light to reach the ground to ...

References

External links

List of exchanges from AreaCodeDownload.com, 816 Area Code

History
{{Coord, 39.2, -94.4, format=dms, display=title, region:US-MO_scale:2000000 816 816 Telecommunications-related introductions in 1947