Best way to get timezone of user based on area code

Question

Hi folks

I'm attempting to get a timezone of a user based on area code information that they provided. I discovered the following resource on maxmind:

http://geolite.maxmind.com/download/geoip/api/php/timezone/

I suspect that I could use this with another api that provides the state that an area code belongs to. I'm looking for a simple REST API that provides this info - or a robust scraping routine that achieve the same results.

Thanks in advance!

Answer 1

I'd caution against this approach. A lot of my friends (those in the 18 to 30 demographic) move across the country and keep their old cell phone numbers. The area code is less and less an indication of current location and more and more an indication of where someone lived at one time. With google voice accounts people might get an area code because they like the number and have never lived there!

Answer 2

I don't know of any specific API made for this, but if you want to store the area code database locally, NANPA is in charge of managing them.

Here's a good starting point http://www.nationalnanpa.com/area_codes/index.html

Answer 3

You wanna detect the area code and shows the time zone of that location? Go to this AreaCodeWorld website for more area code data products. It's quite accurate althought updated quarterly, but the database is covered most of the North America.