Area Code 260
Developed in 1947, and first implemented in 1951 by AT&T, the North American Numbering Plan set out to simplify and facilitate direct dialing of long distance calls. In order to facilitate direct dialing calls, the North American Numbering Plan was created and instituted in 1947 by AT&T, also known as the Bell System (Bell Laboratories), the U.S. telephone semi-monopoly. At first, only long-distance operators used the codes; the first customer-dialed calls using area codes did not occur until November 10, 1951, when the first directly dialed call was made from Englewood, New Jersey to Alameda, California. Direct dialing was gradually instituted throughout the country, and by the mid-1960s, it was commonplace in most of the larger cities.
Area code 260 is a North American Numbering Plan area code for Northeast Indiana. Cities served include Fort Wayne, New Haven, Huntington, Bluffton, Columbia City, Decatur, Angola, Auburn and Wabash.
Eventual depletion of numbers in area code 219 by the end of the 20th century prompted a three-way split of the area code. As the result of a random drawing, Northwest Indiana retained 219, while area code 574 was assigned to the north-central area (South Bend), and Northeast Indiana received the code 260. The area codes split on January 15, 2002, with mandatory dialing taking effect five months later, on June 14, 2002.
Areas under code 260 are serviced by a wide array of telephone service providers, including Level 3 Communications, Centennial Michiana License Company, Sprint Spectrum, United States Cellular Corp, Blue Licenses Holding, Arch Wireless Holdings, Metrocall, Ymax Communications Corporation, FBN Indiana, Omnipoint Communications Midwest, American Messaging, Indiana Paging Network, and many others. All of these providers are committed to quality service, offering a number of tariff schemes for the customers to choose from according to their requirement.
In addition to landline, the service providers also offer cellular connectivity, and dial up and broadband Internet. Some of these also provide premium Wi Fi service. Many have ties with satellite TV networks like Dish, and provide Cable TV services as well. Most importantly, all these service providers have interesting "package" deals that combine two or more services for a price less than what it would have taken for the customers to take subscriptions of each service separately.
Worthy of specific mention in the field of Internet Service Providers of Area Code 260 are companies like Qwest.net (Qwest DSL), Verizon DSL, Toast.net, Broadband National, PeoplePC Online, Copper.net, TotalUSA, GlobalNet Telecom Inc, and Internet Central, which are ever coming up with new attractive plans and tariff schemes addressing a wide array of customers for them to choose from. Each providing high quality connections, great service, and low prices, the service providers have a multitude of access numbers to select from according to the customers' requirement.
With provision for additional facilities like voicemail, caller identification service and many more, it is evident that the service providers of the regions under Area Code 260 keep customer satisfaction as their highest priority, and compete with each other for achieving the same.