Learn About the Maine Area Code Directory

The North American Numbering Plan or the NANP is a numbering plan for the telephones which caters to nineteen countries in the North America including the United States as well as its territories. The other countries that fall under the service of NANP are Bermuda, Antigua and Barbuda, Anguilla, Canada, the Bahamas, the British virgin Islands, Barbados, The Dominican Republic, the Cayman Islands, Jamaica, Grenada, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Montserrat, Saint Lucia, Trinidad and Tobago, the Saint Vincent and the Grenadines and Turks and Calicos
 

Each of these countries has separate regulatory authorities that exercise a considerable amount of authority regarding the contribution towards the numbering resources while at the same time sharing these resources with the other participating countries and territories.

The Numbering System

The North American Numbering Plan was designed by the AT&T in 1947. Its objective was to not only simplify but also facilitate the service of direct dialing for the long distance calls. This plan became effective from 1951. In accordance to the International Telecommunications Union’s recommendations (E.164) which lays down the standard for the international telephone numbering plans, it assigned the country code “1” to the North American Numbering Plan region.
 

The telephone numbers in the United States comprises 10 digits. While the first three digits of a telephone number represent the area code of a particular area, the next three represents the prefix or the telephone exchange and the last four digits represent the particular phone number. Every part of a telephone number is equally important but the first three digits of the telephone number are crucial as these represent the area code.

The area code helps to pinpoint the particular geographic region to which the area code belongs such as the state as well as the county or the town or even the city. According to the recent reports at the moment there are around 215 area codes in operation in the United States.

The area codes are regulated and maintained by the Federal Communications Commissions. Under the supervision of the Federal Communications Commission, the federal as well as the state regulators play an active role in the management of the area codes. For matters pertaining to the administration of the telephone numbers, the Federal Communications Commission receives proposals from the North American Numbering Council. The North American Council or the NANC is an advisory division that is made up of consumer advocates, participants from the various industries as well as the state regulators.

The Numbering Resources

The state of Maine falls under the area which is covered by the North American Numbering Plan. This system further branches out into small Numbering Plan Areas that are also referred to as the NPAs. Each of the areas is identified by the three digit NPA codes. These three digit codes are commonly referred to as the area codes.
 

The North American Numbering Plan Administration also provides various reports that include details which help to not only identify the geographic area codes but also to pinpoint the area codes that are no longer in operation.

More about the Area Codes

According to the North American Numbering Plan Administration the format for the area code is NXX. Here N can be any digit between 2 and 9 and X is can be any digit between 0 and 9. When the area codes were established, the middle digit of the area code required to be either 0 or 1 which was removed in 1995.  The NXX format at present allows a possible combination of 800 choices. But out of all the possible combinations available some are reserved and some are not available.

Area Code 207

The area code of 207 is the only area code that has been assigned to the Maine State by the North American Numbering Plan. This area code was among one of the original area codes that came into effect in 1947. But there are certain parts of this state that uses the area code 418 which actually belongs to Quebec (Canada) such as the Escourt Station which is an isolated area of the Maine State.

This area code caters to 17 counties, 441 cities and has 623 exchanges under it. Some of the counties served by this area code include: Aroostook, Androscoggin, Coos, Franklin, Cumberland, Hancock, Knox, Kennebec, Lincoln, Penobscot, Oxford, Piscataquis, Somerset, Sagadahoc, York, Washington and Waldo.