North American area codes 500, 533, 544, 566 and 577 are non-geographic area codes reserved for personal communications services. The 500 code was authorized by the United States Federal Communications Commission, and introduced into the North American Numbering Plan in 1995.
In 1995 AT&T introduced a "follow-me" service under the brand name of AT&T True Connections using the 500 area code. It was designed to replace the AT&T EasyReach 700 service. Other local exchange carriers and interexchange carriers introduced similar competitive services.
AT&T True Connections service was not well received. Companies, hotels, and others with PBX equipment continued to block the dialing of 500 because it was a caller-paid number. Phone-sex services also began using the 500 prefix and forwarding the calls to various foreign countries.
The 500 prefix is still registered to a variety of phone companies, and is being used for non-geographic services including dial-up modem access.
In 1996 AT&T attempted to migrate users to its revised service called "Personal Reach" 800, built on a toll-free (receiver-paid) platform rather than the original (caller-paid) 500 program. AT&T has a patent (59078110) on "personal reach service".
AT&T then licensed and transferred all personal reach services to MCE, Inc. MCE was supposedly the company providing the back-end system for all personal reach services to AT&T. No public information was released on the transfer away from AT&T. Subscribers were notified by mail that bills would begin to arrive from MCE instead of AT&T. It is also believed that MCE is a subsidiary of EMNS, Inc., a web hosting company in Chicago. MCE continues to supply personal reach service using the AT&T transport network.
AT&T True Connections was discontinued by AT&T in 2000, following the Federal Communications Commission approval of its tariff to cease providing the service.
Although AT&T no longer uses the 500 code, it was supplemented by 533 in 2009, followed by 544 in December 2010. The 566 code was activated in April 2012. In March 2014, the 577 code was also activated. Other codes in reserve for this use: 522 (had been used for Mexico roaming), 588 (as with 522, "easily recognizable" codes as the second and third digits match), plus these "regular" 5xx codes: 521, 523, 524, 525, 526, 527, 528, 529 (other 52x codes for Mexico roaming), 532, 535, 538, 542, 543, 545, 546, 547, 549, 550, 552, 553, 554, 556, 558, 569, 578, and 589.
Vivint alarm and home control company uses the 544 area code to connect to users' control panels.
In 2015 the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) approved the Canadian Non-Geographic Code Assignment Guideline and the assignment of the 622, 633, 644, 655, 677, and 688 non-geographic numbering plan area (NPA) codes to meet the demand for telephone numbers related to technologies such as machine-to-machine applications. The first 6YY NPA to be used is 622 NPA, with additional numbers requested when 622 approaches exhaustion.