San Antonio is getting a new area code that will be given to new phone numbers next year. It has an accidental tie to San Antonio’s name.
It’s a sign of city growth. The 210 area code will be exhausted by early 2018. Starting in October of next year, new San Antonio phone numbers will get the area code 726. Terry Hadley, a spokesman for the Public Utility Commission of Texas says 726 will be what’s called an overlay on top of the same geographic area as 210, which is mostly inside Bexar County.
“An overlay is more efficient because existing phone customers do not have to change their number,” Hadley says.
If you want to keep 210, don’t change your number. Implementing new area codes come with some adjusting. For instance, 10-digit dialing will become a requirement. Hadley says it will be up to phone companies like AT&T and Verizon to get the message out.
“They will be the ones, either through a bill insert or notice, that a new area code will be coming,” he says.
On phone keys, 726 actually spells out S-A-N, as in San Antonio. Joe Cocke, is a senior area code relief planner with the North American Numbering Plan Administrator, which assigns area codes nationally. He says new codes are chosen so they’re not similar to nearby codes and the S-A-N was unintentional.
“It’s an unplanned coincidence, a pleasant one, too. We don’t assign area codes for the sake of finding a vanity prefix,” he says.
So, in theory, some lucky person or business next year could get a phone number that spells SAN-ANT-ONIO.
