Sint Maarten to join NANP with area code 721 next May [telecom]

NANPA's latest planning letter

formatting link
the assignment of NPA 721 to Sint Maarten, Netherlands Antilles. Permissive dialing begins next May 31, after which time numbers in SM can be dialed either as +599 54N-XXXX or as +1 721 54N-XXXX until November 30,

2010. At that point, +1 721 dialing becomes mandatory.

The letter notes that the dialing plan in Sint Maarten will have four categories:

1) Local: 7D 2) Toll to rest of NANP: 1+10D 3) Operator-assisted: 0+10D 4) International Local: 7D

That final category is interesting -- calls to the French half of the island (Saint-Martin) can continue to be dialed as local calls, even though Saint-Martin is not part of the NANP and continues to use its own +590 country code! I don't know of any other part of the NANP that offers this kind of shortcut dialing to any non-NANP location, much less rating it as a local call. Decades ago, parts of Mexico used to be dialable from the US using two pseudo-NPA hacks (706 and 903, IIRC), but those were phased out and eventually assigned as regular area codes long ago, and all calls to Mexico thenceforth required standard +52 dialing. Does anybody know of any similar shortcuts in existence today? Are there any from the NANP half of the island of Hispaniola (Dominican Republic) to the non-NANP half (+509 Haiti)?

There are no details on how Saint-Martin numbers will be mapped into 7 digits for callers from the Dutch half of the island. Saint-Martin numbers appear to be of the form +590 590-XXXXXX, +590 690-XXXXXX or +590

876-XXXXXX. Clearly, some scheme will have to transform those 9-digit local numbers into 7-digit numbers for purposes of dialing them locally from Sint Maarten. Does anyone have any further information on how that will work?

Bob Goudreau Cary, NC

Reply to
Bob Goudreau
Loading thread data ...

Cabling-Design.com Forums website is not affiliated with any of the manufacturers or service providers discussed here. All logos and trade names are the property of their respective owners.