708 Area Code: Chicago's Original Suburban Ring

The 708 area code is the original telephone code for Chicago's suburbs — not one slice of the metro, but the code that once covered the entire ring around the city before it was split apart. Today it reaches the west and southwest inner-ring suburbs closest to Chicago and the south suburbs beyond them, from Cicero and Oak Park to Oak Lawn, Harvey and Orland Park.

708 has served this territory since November 11, 1989, when Chicago's suburbs first got their own area code separate from the city's 312. A 1996 split then carved off the northern suburbs into 847 and the western suburbs into 630, leaving 708 to the west, southwest and south suburbs that remain its footprint today.

Most people looking up 708 fall into two groups: those assigned a 708 number who want to understand what the code represents, and those who received a call from a 708 number and want to know whether it is a genuine suburban Chicago line or a spoofed one.

This guide explains what 708 is, the roughly 60 municipalities it reaches, how the 1996 split and the 2022 overlay came about, the region's time zone, the telephone-manufacturing and architectural history behind it, common scam patterns, and how to activate a 708 virtual number for a business.

Explore MeraTalk's Area Codes solutions — built for carriers, resellers, and enterprises.

The 708 area code is a telephone area code covering the west, southwest and south suburbs of Chicago in Cook and Will counties, Illinois. It was created on November 11, 1989, when regulators split it off from 312 — the first time Chicago's suburbs had a code of their own, separate from the city.

At the time, 708 covered the entire suburban ring around Chicago. That changed in 1996, when the fast-growing northern and western suburbs were carved off into their own codes, leaving 708 with the smaller, though still substantial, west/southwest and south suburban footprint it holds today.

Dialing Format and Time Zone

• Dialing format: (708) 555-0148
• International: +1 708-555-0148
• Original code since: November 11, 1989
• Ten-digit dialing is mandatory for every local call, including calls between two 708 or 464 numbers

The 708 footprint covers roughly 60 municipalities across western and southern Cook County plus eastern and southern Will County — the inner-ring suburbs closest to Chicago's western border, and the south suburbs stretching toward the Indiana line. It notably does not include the city of Chicago itself, which stays on 312 and 773.

The West and Southwest Inner Ring

• Cicero — a historic industrial suburb directly west of Chicago, once home to one of the country's largest telephone-equipment factories
• Berwyn — a dense residential suburb immediately west of Cicero
• Oak Park — the architecturally significant suburb bordering Chicago's West Side
• Oak Lawn & Evergreen Park — established southwest Cook County communities near Midway

The South Suburbs

• Harvey & Blue Island — south suburban Cook County cities along the Little Calumet River
• Calumet City & Chicago Heights — established communities closer to the Indiana border
• Orland Park & Tinley Park — larger south suburban communities that also share ground with the 464 overlay

Because 708 now shares part of its territory with the 464 overlay, the two are best understood together — anyone comparing the region's original code to its overlay can look at how the 464 area code covers that same south-suburban ground.

708 was carved out of 312 on November 11, 1989, giving Chicago's suburbs a code of their own for the first time. In its first years, 708 covered the entire ring of suburbs around the city — north, west and south alike.

The 1996 Three-Way Split

By the mid-1990s, that full ring was growing too fast for one code to sustain. In 1996, regulators split the territory three ways: the northern suburbs became 847, the western suburbs became 630, and 708 retained the west, southwest and south suburbs that make up its footprint today.

• November 11, 1989 — 708 splits from 312, covering the entire Chicago suburban ring
• 1996 — a three-way split hands the northern suburbs to 847 and the western suburbs to 630
• June 30, 1999 — the Illinois Commerce Commission reserves 464 as a future overlay for 708
• January 21, 2022 — 464 finally goes into service across the same 708 territory

Why the 464 Overlay Sat Unused for Decades

Regulators moved early to plan for 708's eventual exhaustion, reserving 464 in 1999. But number pooling and closer commission review of new numbering requests stretched the existing 708 supply far longer than projected, and 464 sat unused for more than two decades before it finally went live in January 2022. Every existing 708 number stayed exactly the same when that happened; new lines issued since then draw from either code.

Get a local number in this area code with transparent wholesale pricing.

The entire 708 and 464 territory sits in a single time zone. Every community from Cicero and Oak Park to Harvey and Orland Park observes Central Time.

• Central Time (CT) — the whole 708/464 footprint, including Cicero, Oak Park, Oak Lawn and Harvey
• No internal time-zone split across the suburban ring

A business running a 708 line can schedule calling hours around a single Central Time window without worrying about a split territory, which simplifies staffing across a region spanning dozens of separate municipalities.

A 708 number connects a business to a suburban Chicago region with an unusually direct tie to the telephone industry itself, alongside one of the most architecturally significant suburbs in the country.

Cicero's Hawthorne Works

Cicero was home to the Hawthorne Works, a Western Electric factory complex that operated from 1905 to 1983 and at its peak employed tens of thousands of workers manufacturing telephone switching equipment and cable used across the entire country. It is a fitting piece of history for a 708 phone number to carry — the region literally helped build the telephone network the rest of the country still relies on.

Oak Park's Architecture and Literary Roots

Oak Park is home to the Frank Lloyd Wright Home and Studio and 25 buildings the architect designed there — more Wright-designed buildings than anywhere else in the world. The suburb also has a well-known connection to author Ernest Hemingway, born in 1899 in what was then part of the Town of Cicero, in the area that became the independent village of Oak Park in 1901.

708 is a legitimate, officially assigned Illinois code, but like any area code its numbers can be spoofed. Caller-ID spoofing lets a fraudster display any number — including a 708 prefix — on a recipient's screen, so a call can appear to come from a local suburban Chicago business or agency when it does not.

• Unsolicited calls demanding immediate payment by gift card, wire transfer or cryptocurrency
• Callers posing as a utility, bank or local government office asking to "verify" personal or account details
• Fake warnings about an unpaid toll, tax bill or benefit problem that pressure an urgent callback
• Robocalls offering a prize or refund that require sharing card details to "process" it

Registering a number with the National Do Not Call Registry cuts down on legitimate telemarketing, but it does nothing to stop scammers who are already breaking the law, so the safest habit is still to verify independently before acting on any unexpected call rather than trusting the name or number displayed on a screen.

Modern cloud phone providers let a business activate a 708 number in minutes — no Cicero or Oak Park office, no hardware, and no long-term contract. Search available 708 numbers, complete a short verification, and route the line to any device anywhere in the world.

A 708 number suits any business targeting Chicago's west and south suburbs — retailers and service providers in Cicero, Berwyn and Oak Park, professional practices in Oak Lawn and Evergreen Park, and companies serving Harvey, Calumet City and the south suburbs further out. Many of these businesses already rely on a virtual phone number for their main line, and adding a second local number for a new region takes the same few minutes.

MeraTalk provides 708 numbers as part of its cloud telephony platform — lines activate in minutes, route to any device, and pair with voicemail, call recording, an auto-attendant and CRM integration from one dashboard. To get started, search available numbers at meratalk.com. For more, see National Do Not Call Registry.

Ready to get started with 708 area code?

Join thousands of businesses using MeraTalk for Wholesale Voice, VoIP, and phone number services.

Frequently Asked Questions