The 682 area code covers Fort Worth, Arlington, and the western Dallas–Fort Worth metroplex, issuing numbers across the identical footprint as 817 — Euless, Keller, Azle, Granbury, and Cleburne among the shared rate centers — since October 7, 2000. NANPA assigned the code on January 22, 2000, and not one local call inside it has ever connected on seven digits.
An area code usually collects its history the hard way — splits endured, prefixes rationed, maps redrawn under protest. 682 skipped every stage. This code was invented to end a crisis rather than live through one: drawn up in a Texas PUC docket over the winter of 1999–2000, switched on the following autumn, and carrying the cleanest ledger an area code can show today — never flagged for jeopardy, never docketed for relief, and supply forecast deep into the 2040s.
A code created to end a shortage
The push came from the code underneath it. By mid-1999, 817 — Fort Worth’s number since January 1953 — was burning through prefixes faster than every forecast, drawing a NANPA jeopardy declaration on June 23, 1999 and, by August, a monthly lottery for whatever prefixes remained. Texas regulators faced a fork: carve the map a second time, as 1997 had done, or layer a new code over the whole territory and leave every existing number alone.
They chose the layer. The Public Utility Commission of Texas, in Project No. 20699, issued its order on December 16, 1999 approving a full services distributed overlay for the 817 area — Fort Worth and its surroundings, with Arlington, Grandview, Weatherford, and Rhome named in the relief paperwork. NANPA assigned 682 on January 22, 2000, and Planning Letter PL-219 (March 1, 2000) published the implementation calendar. Why regulators kept reaching for overlays instead of splits by then comes down to one clause: nobody’s existing number changes.
Seven months on the runway
PL-219 moved the region in deliberate steps. Permissive dialing began at 12:01 a.m. CDT on April 8, 2000, letting local calls in 817 complete at either seven or ten digits while the market practiced. Mandatory ten-digit dialing landed on October 7, 2000 — the same day 682 entered service — and the letter barred any central office code in 682 from activating even a day earlier. Stragglers who kept dialing seven digits reached a recorded intercept until December 9, 2000, when the old habit stopped completing at all.
The letter even named the wire where carriers could prove themselves ready. From March 8, 2000 until launch, a call to test number 682-672-8378 — parked on a Fort Worth switch, CLLI code FTWOTXED03T — played a recorded announcement confirming the caller’s network could route the new code. What a central office code actually is, and why its activation dates get policed this closely, is unpacked in our NPA-NXX guide.
One footprint, twin codes
The map attached to PL-219 draws a single boundary for both codes. Inside it, Fort Worth and Arlington hold the center, ringed by rate centers running from Grapevine, Keller, and North Richland Hills in the northeast down through Mansfield, Alvarado, Cleburne, and Rio Vista in the south, and out west through Azle, Springtown, Reno, Weatherford, Granbury, Acton, and Godley. A 682 number and an 817 number from the same rate center are operationally identical — same local calling area, same cost, same everything but the first three digits.
What the footprint has never included is Dallas. The metroplex operates as two independent numbering markets — 214, 469, 972, and 945 on the eastern side, 817 and 682 on the western — and no code has ever served both. The full state roster, including every overlay Texas has stacked since, is catalogued in our Texas area codes directory.
Ten digits from the first day
682 never had a seven-digit era to give up. PL-219 set the plan that still governs the pair: local calls at ten digits, toll calls at 1+10, operator-assisted, third-party, and credit-card calls at 0+10 — and NANPA’s database lists exactly that today, with 1+10 also permitted locally at the service provider’s discretion.
That head start aged well. When the 988 buildout sent 82 seven-digit area codes to ten-digit dialing in 2021 under PL-556, Fort Worth’s pair had already held the finished dialing plan for two decades — the seven Texas codes on that list all sat elsewhere in the state.
What the exhaust table says now
NANPA’s April 2026 NPA exhaust analysis projects the combined 682/817 pool through the second quarter of 2041 — five quarters later than the October 2025 study allowed — and when NANPA revisited four Texas forecast entries on July 6, 2026, Fort Worth’s was not among them. Neither code has drawn a jeopardy designation, and no relief file is open on either.
Ranked against the neighbors, that is a comfortable seat. The same table books Dallas’s four-code complex through the third quarter of 2035, six years ahead of Fort Worth in the race nobody wants to win, while the two codes carved off old 817 in 1997 landed decades apart — 254 down around Waco projects for 2032, and 940 to the north runs clear to 2049. Two codes have covered the western metroplex for twenty-five years, and the table says a third is nowhere in sight.
When the caller ID reads 682
A 682 display is Fort Worth calling, full stop. To a Tarrant County lead list it reads exactly as local as 817, since the codes are interchangeable across every rate center, and the local presence effect on answer rates applies to either. Because 682 is the younger pool, fresh stock in many western-metroplex rate centers now issues from it — so a 682 number often marks a recently acquired line, never a business less rooted in the market.
The digits alone still prove nothing. Caller ID spoofing can pin 682 to a caller ID from any point on earth, which moves the real vouching to the credential attached to the call rather than the number displayed on it.
That credential is where SIPNEX does its work: an FCC-licensed carrier holding its own authorization, stocking Texas DID numbers by rate center — western-metroplex inventory subject to day-of-order availability — delivered over SIP trunking into the PBX or dialer already running your floor, with A-level attestation signed on every outbound leg under SIPNEX’s own STIR/SHAKEN certificate. RespOrg-managed toll-free service rides alongside when a campaign calls for it.
Questions that come with a 682 number
Is 682 a Fort Worth area code?
Yes. 682 has served Fort Worth, Arlington, and the rest of the western Dallas–Fort Worth metroplex since October 7, 2000, as an overlay sharing every rate center with 817 — Grapevine, Keller, Mansfield, Weatherford, Granbury, and Cleburne included. A 682 number is just as local to Tarrant County as an 817 number from the same rate center; only the assignment date differs.
Why was the 682 area code created?
Because 817 was running dry. After NANPA declared 817 in jeopardy in June 1999 and prefix rationing began, the Public Utility Commission of Texas ordered a full services distributed overlay in Project No. 20699 on December 16, 1999. NANPA assigned 682 on January 22, 2000, and Planning Letter PL-219 scheduled the launch for that October. Overlay relief meant no existing 817 number changed — new supply simply opened under a second code.
How do you dial a 682 area code number?
Ten digits for local calls and 1+10 for toll calls — the plan PL-219 installed on day one, which NANPA still lists, with 1+10 also accepted locally at the provider’s discretion. Mandatory ten-digit dialing began October 7, 2000, the day 682 entered service, so the code has never completed a seven-digit local call in its existence.
When did the 682 area code go into service?
October 7, 2000. NANPA assigned the code on January 22, 2000; permissive ten-digit dialing opened April 8; carriers verified routing against test number 682-672-8378 from March 8 onward; and PL-219 barred every 682 prefix from activating before launch day. A recorded intercept caught leftover seven-digit dialing until December 9, 2000.
Is the 682 area code running low on numbers?
No. The April 2026 exhaust analysis has the shared 682/817 pool reaching the second quarter of 2041 — five quarters more than the prior forecast allowed — and the mid-year correction of July 6, 2026 moved four other Texas entries while passing over Fort Worth’s. Availability in a specific rate center still comes down to what it holds when the DID order goes in.
A code born from a shortage now fronts a metro pool stocked into the 2040s. When a campaign needs Fort Worth digits behind it, SIPNEX provisions 682 and 817 DIDs by rate center, hands them off over SIP trunking, and signs every call A-level under its own certificate — current rates are published, the carrier team answers directly, and the number to dial is (833) 665-2220.
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