North American Numbering Plan

NANP stands for North American Numbering Plan. It is a telephone numbering plan designed and used commonly by 19 different countries and territories in North America. These countries include the United States and its territories, Canada, Bermuda, Anguilla, Antigua & Barbuda, the Bahamas, Barbados, the British Virgin Islands, the Cayman Islands, Dominica, the Dominican Republic, Grenada, Jamaica, Montserrat, St. Kitts and Nevis, St. Lucia, St. Vincent and the Grenadines, Trinidad and Tobago, and Turks & Caicos. NANP aims to reduce the complexity of dialing long distance international calls, making the direct dialing of long distance calls easy within the NANP network. NANP developed a three digit code area code and a seven digit local telephone number system. Through this system, calls can be directly switched to the particular area of the NANP Public Switched Telephone Network (PSTN), from where they can be further transferred to the designation using the local networks.

History

The American Telephone & Telegraph Corporation, originally known as Bell System, developed a plan called North American Numbering Plan to assist the direct dialing of calls. This plan was implemented in 1951. On November 10, 1951, the first long distance directly dialed call was made from Englewood, New Jersey to Alameda, California. Before this day the codes were used only by the long distance operators for the system which did not facilitate direct calling. By mid of 1960 almost all the major countries in North American territories had the Plan executed successfully. Initially 86 codes were used to represent the different areas; these codes were allotted to different regions of North America according to the density of the population. The regions with high density population were allotted the lower numbers while the regions with low population were allotted the higher numbers. Thus, New York was allotted 212, Los Angeles 213, Chicago 312, Dallas 214, Detroit 313 and Pittsburgh 412, while South Dakota was given (605), North Carolina (704), South Carolina (803), and the Maritime Provinces of Canada (902).

Code Plan

Earlier the codes were designed in the form of N-Y-X, in which N is a number between 2-9, Y is either 0 or 1 and X represents any number from 1-9 (if Y is 0) or any number between 2-9 (if Y is 1). This restriction provides assistance to allocate some essential service with special codes, such as 0- Operator, 1- for signaling long distance calls, 00- long distance operator, 011- international access code, 911- for emergency services such as fire, ambulance and police and so on. But after mid 1990’s and earlier 21st century, there had been rapid growth in telecommunication industry. This demand raised the necessity for allocation of more codes. But the restrictions on the code format limited the number of codes which can be allocated. This caused the North American Numbering Plan Administrator (NANPA) which acts as an administrating organization of NANP to expand the number range. The restriction on middle term ‘Y’ was lifted and the new area codes can use any number from 2 and 8 for the middle term of the three digit code. Thus the new area codes were allotted, the area code given for Alabama is 334 and Washington is 360 and so on.

NANP and ICANN

ICANN is reviewing the functions and structure of NueStar Incorporate, the present North American Numbering Plan Administrator (NANPA) in order create a functional structure which addresses accountability, which is the major issue for ICANN. NueStar is the administrator of NANP since 1997. As NANP administrator NueStar is responsible for supervising the assignment and use of NANP resources amongst the NANP participants. NueStar is accountable to the Federal Communication Council (FCC) for its various decisions and measures taken as a administrator of NANP. ICANN is over viewing the procedures which NueStar uses to maintain a transparent accountability towards FCC, which ICANN can use as guidelines to overcome its accountability issues.