Area codes in the Caribbean

Several countries in the Caribbean participate in the North American Numbering Plan (NANP), which is a telephone numbering plan designed after world War II by the American Telephone and Telegraph Company for initially the United States and Canada.

in 1958, AT&T delegated area code 809 for Direct Distance Dialing to the Caribbean to begin integration of the Caribbean telephone networks into the NANP.

From 1958 to 1999, most of the British West Indies in the Caribbean Basin, Bermuda, the U.S. Virgin Islands, the Dominican Republic and Puerto Rico shared area code 809. By the mid-1990s, with the proliferation of fax machines, mobile phones, computers, and pagers in the region, the pool of available central office codes was exhausting. Beginning with Bermuda in November 1994, and The Bahamas, Puerto Rico, and Barbados in 1995, several countries in the Caribbean received individual area code assignments from the NANPA, effectively splitting area code 809. By 1999, it was retained only by the Dominican Republic, following the departure of Saint Vincent and the Grenadines from using the area code.