Area Codes 310 and 424

North American telephone area codes 310 and 424 are the California telephone area codes which are roughly coterminous with the West Los Angeles and South Bay areas of Los Angeles County, including Santa Catalina Island (located 26 miles (42 km) south of the mainland portion of Los Angeles County). It also includes a small portion of Ventura County. Area code 310 was split from Area code 213 on November 2, 1991; the 424 area code overlay of 310 became effective on July 26, 2006. Area code 213, which at its inception covered all of Southern California, is now reserved exclusively for a small area of central Downtown Los Angeles, having been diminished in size by the addition of the Area code 323.

Area code 424 is the first non-mobile area code overlay in Southern California. Because of this, dialers in the 310 area code are no longer able to dial a 7-digit number even if they are dialing another phone number in the same area code. Until the overlay of area codes 657 and 714 became active in 2008, the 310-424 complex was the only area code overlay in the entire state of California, despite California having more area codes than any other state.

310 was one of the first area codes to use the form N-1-0. At the time, all area codes were still required to have either 0 (zero) or 1 (one) for their middle digit, but by 1991, only five unassigned area codes remained that followed this pattern. Area codes ending in 1-0 were not possible, but this changed in the early 1990s after it became a requirement to dial a "1" before the area code to signal a long distance call. This change allowed an additional seven new area codes to become available for assignment: 210, 310, 410, 510, 610, 810, and 910. (710 was reserved for the U.S. Government.) Without these, all remaining area codes would have been assigned by 1992, but the inclusion of the seven N-1-0 numbers allowed NANPA to continue assigning new area codes with 0 or 1 in the middle digit through 1994 (when the last N-1-0 area code, 610, was assigned to parts of southeastern Pennsylvania). Area codes assigned the following year (1995) were the first to have middle digits other than 0 or 1 (area codes 334 in Alabama and 360 in Washington).

Read more about Area Codes 310 And 424:  Splits and Overlay Controversy

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