NANPA Planning Letter #338, dated Monday 2-August-2004
Quoting from the NANPA Planning Letter:
---------------------------------------------------------------------- "(on) July 14, 2004, Indotel notified NANPA that it had approved an all-services distributed overlay as the relief method for the 809 NPA. The 809 NPA currently serves the Caribbean country of Dominican Republic.
"The new 829 NPA will serve the same geographic area currently served by the existing 809 NPA."
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Indotel
Mandatory ten-digit local intra-809 dialing to begin on 1-August-2005.
The earliest effective/activation date of geographic/POTS (non-test) new 829-NXX c.o.codes is to be 1-October-2005.
Toll calls (including intra-809) are already dialed as 1+ten-digits, and will continue ot be dialed as such. 0+ten-digit dialing is also in use for intra-809 and all NANP "Operator/Card/Special" calls (although various 1-8YY- and special access code dialing is also in use; AT&T, MCI and Sprint and others have had 1-800- "dial-ups" from the Dominican Republic for Operator/Card services through their own platofrms, for many years now).
+1-829-555-9999 is the test-number, and is scheduled for activation by 1-July-2005. I hope it does NOT "supervise". For one, calls to the Dominican Republic would be billed as INTERNATIONAL/OVERSEAS (even on discount plans) from the US (and Canada), NOT as "domestic" rates. And the use of the '555' c.o.code (if the test number does indeed "supe") would more likely mean a charge of "Customer-dialed Directory Assistance in a NANP Area Code" which many US/Canadian/NANP-based carriers would probably charge at $1.50 or $2.00 a call (since 829-555 would be "assumed to be D.A."), which would be even more expensive than a one minute call to the Dominican Republic.It might have been better for Indotel/VeriZon/etc. to have selected a test-number of something like 829-829-xxxx (or 829-809-xxxx) rather than 829-555-xxxx.
There is also a list of Dominican Republic based telco contacts. The four service providers/telcos listed include:
- VeriZon-Dominicana (the old GTE-CoDeTel) (a few years back Puerto Rico Telephone was taken over by GTE, now part of VeriZon)
- Centennial Dominicana (the old ITT-All America Cables & Radio) (they are also quite active in Puerto Rico)
- Tricom S.A.
- Orange Dominicana
809 was created by AT&T in 1958 for Puerto Rico, the U.S. Virgin Islands and the Caribbean/Bermuda area. This was several years BEFORE the ITU/CCITT came out with a worldwide Country Code scheme (now known as Recommendation E.164) circa 1963/64. I would assume that AT&T intended for other (now non-NANP) Caribbean areas to have been included in NPA 809, at that time, such as Cuba, Haiti, and the other French and Dutch islands in the Caribbean. But for obvious political and also cultural reasons, those areas never became part of +1/NANP, NPA 809.Puerto Rico NPA 787 split from 809 in 1996 when the 809 Area Code for the NANP-Caribbean/Bermuda began to split into nineteen unique geo-political area codes. Bermuda (actually in the Atlantic area) was the first to split from 809 in 1995, into NPA 441. St.Vincent & the Grenadines was the last to split from 809 in Spring 1998, into NPA
784. The use of 784 for St.Vincent/Grenadines became mandatory in Spring 1999 leaving 809 exclusively for the Dominican Republic.In 2001, Puerto Rico's 787 was OVERLAID with 939.
And now 809 (exlusively) for the Dominican Republic is being overlaid, with 829.
I wonder if +1-876 Jamaica is close to needing relief anytime soon? But I doubt that +1-242 Bahamas or +1-868 Trinidad/Tobago are close to needing relief anytime soon.
These five areas (Puerto Rico, the Dominican Republic, Jamaica, Bahamas, Trinidad/Tobago) have always been the largest users of NXX c.o.codes in the NANP/Caribbean, i.e., the *OLD* 809 NPA prior to the later 1990s!
And finally, as reported in late July by Ray, Indotel's website has some Spanish-only information on expansion of local/EAS calling within the Dominican Republic found at this LOOOONNNNGGGG URL, which might wrap in some mail readers: