Area Code 815
Area code 815-XXX-XXXX belongs one third of the state of Illinois (Northern), apart from the Chicago city and the Moline and surrounding areas. It covers 30counties, 30 cities fall under 815 NPA providing identity to almost 783 exchanges. Following prominent counties are served by code 815: Boone, Cook, Grundy, Kane, Livingston, Stephenson, Woodford etc. Illinois is an American State having an estimated population of 12, 901, 563 people. It is the Fifth populous state of USA. About 66% of the state’s population lives in the Northern part of Illinois, mainly due to urban development of Chicago city. Three US presidents, including Barrack Obama have been selected from Illinois.
History
As per the NANP blue print for distribution of area codes, originally made in 1947, Illinois was divided by 4 different area codes: 312 for Chicago, 815 for Northern Illinois, 217 for central and 618 for Southern. In 1966, 309 code broke off to then cover the areas falling under 815. In 1990, the authorities allotted area code 708 to suburbs of Chicago city while the Downtown area was allowed to keep their existing code, i.e., 312. This led to widespread spilt off of area codes in the suburb area, leading to formation of 847 and 630 for North suburb and West Suburb respectively. By 1996, suburbs itself were using 3 different area codes. The confusion was soon felt and NANP had to take actions to consolidate these codes. They announced code 773 for whole of suburbs while the city’s code was unchanged from 312. Also, NPA 847 was soon out of its numbers, and to accommodate more demand, overlay code 224 was issued in 1996. Similarly, 331 was to be issued to code 630 area and 779 for code 815 area. The 815 to 779 overlay was held on March 17, 2007.
Telephone Services
Illinois is served by both landline and Mobile service. Popular fixed line services in Illinois are: Verizon which serves about 70.22% of total usage of the state while Citizens Telecom takes up the rest 29.78%.
Popular Wireless Service Providers are New Cellular Wireless, taking up 50% of the traffic, followed by United States Cellular Corp. having 25% share and Verizon Mobiles having the rest 25%.
How an Overlay Code Works
The change of code from 773 to 872 is technically called “Overlay”. An overlay plan is when a new code is applied into an area that is already using by one area code, leading to usage of two or more codes for the same area. The old subscribers retain the old coded phone numbers, while the new applicants are required to use the new code. The callers are not affected by this spilt/consolidation, because the traffic is automatically diverted. Local calls still remain local calls, the caller is charged accordingly. Overlays are a lot more popular these days as the numbers are getting exhausted sooner. Illinois already had 3 overlays.