Area codes 518 and 838, Telephone prefix in eastern Upstate New York, United States.
Area codes 518 and 838 cover the eastern portion of New York state, running from the Mohawk Valley to the Vermont border and from the Canadian line down to areas south of Albany. This zone includes 24 counties, linking urban centers with the rural Adirondack region.
Code 518 was among the first North American prefixes introduced in 1947 and kept its original boundaries for over seven decades. In September 2017, the additional code 838 was added to meet the growing demand for telephone numbers.
The telephone codes connect diverse communities across the Capital District, including the interconnected cities of Albany, Schenectady, and Troy, plus rural Adirondack settlements.
All local calls in the region require ten-digit dialing since August 2017, combining the area code with the seven-digit number. Callers from outside the region dial 1 first, followed by the three-digit code and the number.
This prefix zone is the only one in New York that has kept its geographic boundaries intact since the initial 1947 rollout. Other codes in the state have been split or reassigned multiple times, while this region remained unchanged.
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