Area code 606 is a telephone

area code A telephone numbering plan is a type of numbering scheme used in telecommunication to assign telephone numbers to subscriber telephones or other telephony endpoints. Telephone numbers are the addresses of participants in a telephone network, rea ...

in the

North American Numbering Plan The North American Numbering Plan (NANP) is an integrated telephone numbering plan for twenty-five regions in twenty countries, primarily in North America and the Caribbean. This group is historically known as World Zone 1, World Numbering Zone ...

for the eastern half of south-central and the eastern part of the Commonwealth of Kentucky. Cities and towns in the numbering plan area include Ashland, Morehead, Hazard, Middlesboro,

Somerset Somerset ( , ), Archaism, archaically Somersetshire ( , , ) is a Ceremonial counties of England, ceremonial county in South West England. It is bordered by the Bristol Channel, Gloucestershire, and Bristol to the north, Wiltshire to the east ...

, Stanford,

London London is the Capital city, capital and List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, largest city of both England and the United Kingdom, with a population of in . London metropolitan area, Its wider metropolitan area is the largest in Wester ...

, Corbin, Greenup, Paintsville, Pikeville and Maysville. Most of its service area lies within the Kentucky region known as the Eastern Kentucky Coalfield. It runs along the entire length of the state's borders with

Virginia Virginia, officially the Commonwealth of Virginia, is a U.S. state, state in the Southeastern United States, Southeastern and Mid-Atlantic (United States), Mid-Atlantic regions of the United States between the East Coast of the United States ...

and

West Virginia West Virginia is a mountainous U.S. state, state in the Southern United States, Southern and Mid-Atlantic (United States), Mid-Atlantic regions of the United States.The United States Census Bureau, Census Bureau and the Association of American ...

History

Area code 606 was created in 1954 in a split of the 502 numbering plan area. It initially comprised the entire eastern half of Kentucky, as far west as Lexington and Northern Kentucky, the Kentucky side of the

Cincinnati Cincinnati ( ; colloquially nicknamed Cincy) is a city in Hamilton County, Ohio, United States, and its county seat. Settled in 1788, the city is located on the northern side of the confluence of the Licking River (Kentucky), Licking and Ohio Ri ...

area. Notably, it was one of the first three area codes with "0" as the middle digit that were not assigned to an entire state; the others were area code 507 in

Minnesota Minnesota ( ) is a U.S. state, state in the Upper Midwestern region of the United States. It is bordered by the Canadian provinces of Manitoba and Ontario to the north and east and by the U.S. states of Wisconsin to the east, Iowa to the so ...

and

area code 607 Area code 607 is a telephone area code in the North American Numbering Plan for the U.S. state of New York. It serves parts of its Southern Tier, which borders Pennsylvania. The numbering plan area (NPA) was created in 1954 by combining a sou ...

in New York state. In 1999, most of the northwestern portion of the old 606 territory, including Lexington and Northern Kentucky, split off with area code 859. Conventional wisdom suggested that Lexington and Northern Kentucky should have kept 606. Lexington was by far the largest city with the existing area code. Combined, Lexington and Northern Kentucky accounted for almost two-thirds of the population. When an area code is split, normal practice calls for the largest city to retain the old area code. However, the rural portion of 606 is one of the poorest areas of the nation; 16 of the 100 poorest counties in the nation by median income are in 606. The Kentucky Public Service Commission and BellSouth (now part of

AT&T AT&T Inc., an abbreviation for its predecessor's former name, the American Telephone and Telegraph Company, is an American multinational telecommunications holding company headquartered at Whitacre Tower in Downtown Dallas, Texas. It is the w ...

), the dominant carrier in the area at the time, decided to let the rural portion retain 606 in order to spare residents and businesses in this notoriously impoverished area the expense and burden of having to change their numbers, which would have also required ''en masse'' reprogramming of cell phones. Also, 859 on a standard telephone keypad can be translated into "UKY", a reference to the University of Kentucky, the state's flagship institution of higher learning, located in Lexington. With the great majority of the old 606's landlines and cell phones transferring to 859, the split left 606 as one of the most thinly populated area codes in the country. As of 2022 it is not projected to exhaust until about 2034.

Central office prefixes

NOTE: This area code has a central office number assigned to Danville, (606–661) which is mostly served by the 859 area code. 976, issued in 1986, is assigned to Ashland.

References

External links

* {{Area code box , State = KY , This = 606 , N = 937/326, 740/220, 513/283 , S = 423, 931 , E = 304/681, 276 , W = 859, 270/364 , S1 = OH , S2 = TN , S3 = VA , S4 = WV 606 606 Telecommunications-related introductions in 1954