Area code 512 identifies the Austin metro area in Central Texas, covering Travis, Williamson, and Hays counties, including Austin itself along with Round Rock, Georgetown, San Marcos, Cedar Park, Pflugerville, Kyle, and Buda. It was assigned in October 1947 as one of Texas's original four area codes, originally stretching from the Gulf Coast to the Mexican border and covering San Antonio, Corpus Christi, Brownsville, and Austin. San Antonio's territory split away in 1992, and on February 13, 1999, the southern portion including Corpus Christi broke off as area code 361, leaving 512 with roughly its current Austin footprint. By the early 2010s renewed growth pushed the region toward exhaustion again, so the Public Utility Commission of Texas approved 737 as an overlay covering the identical territory, effective July 1, 2013; existing 512 numbers kept their digits while 737 went only to new lines, and the region has required mandatory 10-digit dialing ever since. The area sits in the Central Time Zone, observing CST in winter and CDT in summer. On the caution side, 512 numbers are frequently spoofed through neighbor spoofing that matches the first six digits of a victim's own number, plus government-impersonation calls posing as the IRS or Social Security Administration, one-ring Wangiri callback scams, and fake tech-recruiting scams that target Austin's large tech workforce with bogus job offers requesting fees or personal data. Anyone contacted this way is advised to withhold personal or financial information and report suspicious calls to the FTC. For businesses, a local 512 number can be provisioned through a cloud platform such as Softtop by searching Texas inventory for 512, choosing a DID, toll-free, or vanity number, and assigning it to a team or AI receptionist, with porting available in five to ten business days for numbers already in service elsewhere.