Area code 809 redirects here. 809 once covered Bermuda and many islands in the Caribbean which have since been allocated their own codes; see Area codes in the Caribbean for more details.

Telephone numbers in the Dominican Republic use area code 809 with 829 and 849 as overlay codes. Telecommunications in the Dominican Republic use the North American Numbering Plan (NANP) country code, 1, followed by the area code in the same form as an internal area code in other NANP countries, such as the US and Canada.

The area codes 809, 829 and 849 are telephone area codes solely for the Dominican Republic. Following Saint Vincent and the Grenadines' leaving 809 in 1999, no other countries use the legacy 809 area code.

When in the Dominican Republic, the 3-digit area code followed by the 7-digit phone number must be dialed. When calling the Dominican Republic from the United States or Canada, this must be prefixed by the digit "1". From other countries the international prefix used in the originating country must be dialled before the "1".

[ 809 scam email

Around 1996, an email from Scambusters.org appeared, warning about the 809 and other Caribbean area codes scams, and this (legitimate) warning began to make the rounds of forwarded emails. As usual with such forwards, people have modified it from its original form to make it appear more urgent. Untruths and exaggerations in the resulting hoax email warning now include the following:

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.