Unchanged since 1947, Pennsylvania's 814 area will switch over to 10-digit dialing

Most of Western Pennsylvania has had to dial 10 digits to make a phone call for quite some time now. In the greater Pittsburgh area, the 724 area code wasn’t sufficient to keep pace by 2013, and a third code, 878, was added.

But for multiple generations living in the 814 area code, seven-digit dialing has been a way of life since 1947. That area code encompasses all or parts of Armstrong, Bedford, Blair, Cambria, Centre, Clarion, Clearfield, Clinton, Crawford, Elk, Erie, Forest, Fulton, Huntingdon, Indiana, Jefferson, McKean, Mercer, Mifflin, Potter, Somerset, Tioga, Venango and Warren counties, along with small sections of Fayette and Westmoreland.

Now the 814 area code is reaching its limit of just over 7.9 million phone numbers. In addition to starting 10-digit dialing, the Pennsylvania Public Utility Commission will also overlay a new 582 area code once 814 numbers run out.

Ten-digit dialing will begin April 3, and PUC spokesman Nils Hagen-Frederiksen wants to make sure all of the connections residents expect to make are able to happen with no problems.

“After April 3, if you dial manually you’ll get a recorded message asking you to hang up and dial again using the area code,” he said. “But if you have some sort of automatic device, whether it’s speed-dial for grandma, a fax machine with programmed numbers, but especially a medical-alert system that puts out an automatic call — there’s not necessarily going to be a human there to relay the message and fix the problem.”

Hagen-Frederiksen said one of the main reasons for the six-month adjustment period that will end April 3 — during which 10-digit dialing has worked for all assigned numbers, but isn’t mandatory — is for this precise reason.

“You can check those systems, you can talk to the company that put in your alarm system or your fire-control system,” he said. “And you can program in 814 as the area code that verify that it works.”

Millions of numbers

So how do nearly 8 million phone numbers get snapped up in a largely rural area?

According to Hagen-Frederiksen, the average person is likely connected to several phone numbers they don’t even know about.

“Your wifi hot-spot, the broadband card for your laptop; you may not know what the number is, but it’s got a number assigned to it,” he said. “And with the portability of the numbers, especially on the mobile phone side, you can have someone with an area code that is not associated at all with where they live.”

Phone numbers are assigned by the North American Numbering Plan Administrator in Herdon, Va.

Heidi Wayman, data management manager for NANPA, said there is no precise date when the new 582 numbers will begin to be assigned because carriers and service providers can reserve sizable blocks of numbers to be activated later.

“We have 11 prefixes left to be assigned,” Wayman said of the middle three digits in all phone numbers. “Each prefix has 10,000 numbers. But right now, there are also 608 available ‘blocks’ of 1,000 numbers each.”

For Hagen-Frederiksen, the important thing is to drill the idea of 10-digit dialing into residents’ heads, so that no matter their area code, dialing it will be a force of habit.

“We don’t want April 3 to sneak up on people,” he said. “It’s cold and snowy outside right now, and it’s a nice weekend to sit indoors and check out your devices, make sure they’re going to work properly when you need them.”