In 1936, AT&T installed the first telephone service extensions to Puerto Rico, Jamaica, and El Salvador in the Caribbean.
In 1996, the Jamaican government requested and were granted by Bellcore, the NANP administration, the assignment of a new and separate area code for the country.
[5] The country has been served by two mobile operators – Cable & Wireless/Liberty Global (marketed as FLOW Jamaica) and Digicel.
Similar scams have been linked to Grenada (area code 473), Antigua (268), the Dominican Republic (809, 829, and 849), and the British Virgin Islands (284).
[6] The telephone fraud in Jamaica is a primary topic of the episode "Jamaican Lottery Scam" of the television series American Greed.