Telephone number A telephone number is a sequence of digits assigned to a landline telephone subscriber station connected to a telephone line or to a wireless electronic telephony device, such as a radio telephone or a mobile telephone, or to other devices f ...

s in

Puerto Rico Puerto Rico (; abbreviated PR; tnq, Boriken, ''Borinquen''), officially the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico ( es, link=yes, Estado Libre Asociado de Puerto Rico, lit=Free Associated State of Puerto Rico), is a Caribbean island and unincorporated ...

are assigned under 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). Prior to March 1, 1996, Puerto Rico was one of many Caribbean islands served by

area code 809 Area codes 809, 829, and 849 are telephone area codes in the North American Numbering Plan (NANP) for the Dominican Republic. As all NANP members, the Dominican Republic uses country code ''1'', and has similar dialing procedures for dialing the ...

. On that date Puerto Rico was assigned the new

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, r ...

787 (with the

mnemonic A mnemonic ( ) device, or memory device, is any learning technique that aids information retention or retrieval (remembering) in the human memory for better understanding. Mnemonics make use of elaborative encoding, retrieval cues, and image ...

PUR or PTR). Permissive dialing of 809 ended January 31, 1997. Within only four years, 787 was already on the brink of exhaustion due to the proliferation of cell phones and dial-up Internet connections. To solve the problem, 787 was overlaid with area code 939 in or about September 2001, with ten-digit dialing required for all calls. A split had been ruled out in order to spare Puerto Ricans the expense and burden of changing their numbers for the second time in a decade, the island's extremely dense population, and the lack of a suitable boundary for a split. 939 is primarily used for cell phones.

References

External links

List of exchanges in 787 Area Code

Telecommunications in Puerto Rico

Area codes in the Caribbean

Telephone numbers A telephone number is a sequence of digits assigned to a landline telephone subscriber station connected to a telephone line or to a wireless electronic telephony device, such as a radio telephone or a mobile telephone, or to other devices f ...

{{PuertoRico-stub

See also

References

External links