Area code 829 for the Dominican Republic operates as an overlay for the local (809 and 849) telephonearea codes. The dual area code system was added to local telephony in July 2005 and later mandatory in November 2005. The new telephony rules were almost wholly due to the explosive growth of the cellular population in the Dominican Republic, starting in the mid-1990s with telephone prepaid-cards being the main propulsion, and growing incredibly through the early 2000s with the launch of two new cell-phone carriers making the major-cellular provider count four nationwide. The 809 area-code used to be the default legacy area code for many other Caribbean areas, including Puerto Rico. In the mid-1990s, the 809 was split and eventually just assigned to the Dominican Republic. Also, the reason for this newly placed dual area code system is that it is estimated the standard 7-digit area code could hold around 9.5 million number combinations, and currently when? ] there are around 1.6 million land-based lines and 4.2 million cellular phones. Thus it was decided to attach another area-code to this country, because of the extensive growth and threat of number depletion. In early 2009 a decision was made to add a second overlay, 849 . The triple area code system went into effect on February 15th, 2010.