Area codes 513 and 283
North American area code 513 serves southwest Ohio including Cincinnati and many surrounding cities, such as Forest Park, Hamilton, Lebanon, West Chester, Mason, Middletown, Norwood, Oxford, Harrison, Cleves, Miamitown and Trenton.
It is one of the original area codes established in 1947, and originally covered the entire southwest quadrant of the state. In 1996, however, most of the northern and eastern portion of the old 513 territory, including Dayton, was split into area code 937. The split came about mainly due to the proliferation of cell phones and pagers. The supply of numbers was further limited because the Cincinnati LATA extends some distance into Northern Kentucky and southeastern Indiana, and several numbers in northern Kentucky's 606 (now in 859) and southern Indiana's 812 weren't available for use. Indeed, years after the introduction of number portability, 513 is still used to this day by a large number of cell phone users on the Kentucky and Indiana sides of the Cincinnati area.
A new area code 283 has been assigned to overlay the current 513 area, but this has been delayed as the 513 area code has not yet been depleted of available numbers.[1] Under current projections, 283 will not need to be implemented until at least 2018.[2] This makes Cincinnati one of the largest cities where seven-digit dialing is still possible.
Originally, 513 was slated to cover the western third of Iowa—basically, everything west of Des Moines. Cities designated for coverage included Sioux City and Council Bluffs.[3]
Very similar to how Manhattan is known as "212", Cincinnati is sometimes colloquially referred to as the "513".
See also
References
- ^ Pending Area Code Exhausts. The Public Utilities Commission of Ohio. October 2006.
- ^ http://www.nanpa.net/pdf/NRUF/April_2014_NPA_Exhaust_Projections.pdf
- ^ The U.S. Government History of Area Codes. November 2007
| North: 937 | ||
| West: 812 765 | area code 513 | East: 937 |
| South: 859 | ||
| Indiana area codes: 219, 260, 317/463, 574, 765, 812/930 | ||
| Kentucky area codes: 270/364, 502, 606, 859 | ||