Area codes 705 and 249 are telephone area codes that cover most of northeastern and central Ontario in Canada. 705 was initially created in 1957 by the North American Numbering Plan (NANPA) from portions of the area covered by area codes 613 and 519, and covered nearly all of Ontario north and west of the Golden Horseshoe. Area code 807, covering northwestern Ontario, was split from area code 705 in early 1962. Although 705 was not close to exhaustion at the time, creating a new area code was thought necessary in order to improve routing of calls from Manitoba and western Canada to northwestern Ontario. Greater routing efficiency has since been achieved with the implementation of highly computerized digital exchanges that were not available in the early 1960s.