North American Numbering Plan

The North American Numbering Plan (NANP) governs the managment of telephone numbers for the Public Switched Telephone Networks in North America (Canada, USA, Carribean, and territories) within the international country code prefix '+1'.

North American phone numbers are in the format (where N is any digit from 2-9, and X from 0-9):

   NPA-NXX-XXXX

Specifically:

   NPA identifies the 3-digit Numbering Plan Area (Area Code) 
   NXX identifies the Central Office (aka. Exchange) within the NPA
   XXXX identifies the Station within the NXX 

In NPAs that do not require overlay facilities numbers of the form NXX-XXXX are colloquially refered to as local and numbers of the form 1-NPA-NXX-XXXX are known as long distance. In certain NPAs, particularly large urban areas, the maximum number of available NXX and Station code combinations has been reached, requiring additional non-toll NPA's to be assigned - these are known as overlay facilites and their presence is generally reflected by 'local' numbers taking on the form NPA-NXX-XXXX and 'long distance' the form 1-NPA-NXX-XXXX. The NANPA maintains historical assignments statistics on Station and Exchange code use within each NPA and periodically issues exhaustion projections (eg. http://www.nanpa.com/pdf/NRUF/2006-2NPA_Exhaust_Projections.pdf) which are used to advertise and plan network structure changes.

Unlike many countries calls between the majority of local stations in the United States and Canada are toll-free, with only long distance calls incuring a toll charge. The requirement for prefixing a leading 1 to place a toll call is known as requiring toll alerting. The need for toll alerting varies from NPA to NPA however it is universally active in Canada and implemented for most other jurisdictions in the NANP.

The official managment website for the NANP is http://www.nanpa.com

• Linkmad Areacode Map
• List of Area Codes

LERG

The North American numbering plan is available in a data base called the LERG maintained by Telcordia.
The LERG has data for every switch and central office in the North American telephone network.
Copies of the LERG can be purchased from Telcordia. LERG info is constantly changing, so most users subscribe to periodic updates.

Subsets of the information in the LERG are available free on the Web:

• NANPA selected LERG info in Excel format
• http://www.telcodata.us/ LERG type info
• http://www.dslreports.com/coinfo LERG info with maps

A user submitted VBScript is available to quickly export the Excel data to a MySQL script. View

Maps

Maps are available that show Central Office locations, local calling areas, and other information

Mapquest will generate a map show the approximate Central Office location if you invoke it with a URL like this:
  http://www.mapquest.com/maps/map.adp?areacode=702&exchange=939
change the areacode and exchange values to match the NPA-NXX you want to display.

Other Map sources:

• http://www.dslreports.com/coinfo LERG info with maps
• http://sd.wareonearth.com/~phil/npanxx/ Map and data from April 1999
• MapInfo sells extensive and detailed LERG based Maps and Data

Local Calling Area

• see: Local Calling Area

Information

• Lincmad.com North American Numbering Plan Information

Special Use NPA

• NPA 900 Usage and History of area code 900
• NPA 700
• NPA 500 Usage and History of area code 500

Potentially Premium Rate NPAs

• 900-NXX-XXXX--premium rate numbers, prices vary
• 700-NXX-XXXX--defined by long distance carrier, one generally calls 1-700-555-4141 toll-free to identify the carrier
• 500-NXX-XXXX--personal communication services (follow me)
• 533-NXX-XXXX--was reserved for expansion of personal communication services, but the reservation has been withdrawn

Potentially Premium Rate Exchanges

• NPA-976-XXXX
• NPA-950-XXXX--some reports that there may be a charge for calling these numbers. Is this true?

Toll-Free Special Use NPAs

• 800-NXX-XXXX
• 888-NXX-XXXX
• 877-NXX-XXXX
• 866-NXX-XXXX
• 855-NXX-XXXX

Carrier Identification Codes

Also known as CIC codes, PIC codes, Dial-Around Numbers, 1010 Numbers, 101XXXX Codes, etc.

• See Carrier Identification Codes

See Also

• Numbering Plans
• NANPA North American Numbering Plan Administration — lots of good data