Telephone numbers in Canada follow the fixed-length

Bell System The Bell System was a system of telecommunication companies, led by the Bell Telephone Company and later by the American Telephone and Telegraph Company (AT&T), that dominated the telephone services industry in North America for over one hundr ...

format, consisting of the

country code Country codes are short alphabetic or numeric geographical codes (geocodes) developed to represent countries and dependent areas, for use in data processing and communications. Several different systems have been developed to do this. The term '' ...

''1'', followed by a three-digit

area code A telephone numbering plan is a type of numbering scheme used in telecommunication to assign telephone numbers to subscriber telephones or other telephony endpoints. Telephone numbers are the addresses of participants in a telephone network, rea ...

, a three-digit

central office code The North American Numbering Plan (NANP) is a telephone numbering plan for twenty-five regions in twenty countries, primarily in North America and the Caribbean. This group is historically known as World Zone 1 and has the international calling ...

(or exchange code) and a four-digit station code. This is represented as ''1 NPA NXX XXXX'', in which the

is "1". Local calls from Canadian landlines must be dialled without the leading ''1'', which is used as the

trunk prefix A trunk prefix is a digit sequence to be dialed before a telephone number to initiate a telephone call for the purpose of selecting an appropriate telecommunications circuit by which the call is to be routed. Making a domestic (national) telephone ...

for domestic long-distance calls. Toll calls from Canada to other

North American Numbering Plan The North American Numbering Plan (NANP) is a telephone numbering plan for twenty-five regions in twenty countries, primarily in North America and the Caribbean. This group is historically known as World Zone 1 and has the international callin ...

countries are dialled in the same format (eleven digits) as domestic calls. Overseas calls to locations outside country code ''1'' are dialled with the ''011'' international prefix, followed by the country code and the national significant number.

Mobile phones

As the recipient of a mobile call pays airtime, standard

mobile phone A mobile phone, cellular phone, cell phone, cellphone, handphone, hand phone or pocket phone, sometimes shortened to simply mobile, cell, or just phone, is a portable telephone that can make and receive calls over a radio frequency link whil ...

numbers are not uniquely different from land-line numbers and thus follow the same format and area codes as for land-lines. Numbers may be ported between landline and mobile. The rarely used non-geographic

area code 600 Area code 600 is a telephone area code in the North American Numbering Plan for non-geographic use in Canada of specialized telecommunication services such as telex applications, caller-pays cellular, ISDN, and mobile satellite communication ser ...

is one exception to this pattern (non-portable, and allows caller-pays-airtime

satellite telephony A satellite telephone, satellite phone or satphone is a type of mobile phone that connects to other phones or the telephone network by radio through orbiting satellites instead of terrestrial cell sites, as cellphones do. The advantage of a sa ...

); some

independent Independent or Independents may refer to: Arts, entertainment, and media Artist groups * Independents (artist group), a group of modernist painters based in the New Hope, Pennsylvania, area of the United States during the early 1930s * Independ ...

landline exchanges are also non-portable. Mobile phone providers had supported either

CDMA Code-division multiple access (CDMA) is a channel access method used by various radio communication technologies. CDMA is an example of multiple access, where several transmitters can send information simultaneously over a single communication ...

GSM The Global System for Mobile Communications (GSM) is a standard developed by the European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI) to describe the protocols for second-generation ( 2G) digital cellular networks used by mobile devices such as ...

; both are being supplanted by

UMTS The Universal Mobile Telecommunications System (UMTS) is a third generation mobile cellular system for networks based on the GSM standard. Developed and maintained by the 3GPP (3rd Generation Partnership Project), UMTS is a component of the Inte ...

Telus Telus Communications Inc. (TCI) is the wholly owned principal subsidiary of Telus Corporation, a Canadian national telecommunications company that provides a wide range of telecommunications products and services including internet access, voi ...

shut down its CDMA in mid-2015;

Bell Mobility Bell Mobility Inc. is a Canadian mobile network operator, wireless network operator and the division of Bell Canada which offers wireless services across Canada. It operates networks using LTE (telecommunication), LTE and Evolved HSPA, HSPA+ on i ...

's CDMA network, the country's last major provider of that type, went dark on January 1, 2017.

Toll-free and premium numbers

Non-geographic

toll-free telephone number A toll-free telephone number or freephone number is a telephone number that is billed for all arriving calls. For the calling party, a call to a toll-free number from a landline is free of charge. A toll-free number is identified by a dialing prefi ...

s (+1 800, 833, 844, 855, 866, 877, 888) and

premium-rate telephone number Premium-rate telephone numbers are telephone numbers that charge callers higher price rates for select services, including information and entertainment. A portion of the call fees is paid to the service provider, allowing premium calls to be an ...

s (+1-900) are allocated from the same blocks as the corresponding US numbers. Numbers with exchange code ''976'' are also expensive premium calls.

Formatting

Telephone numbers are usually written as ''NPA-NXX-XXXX'', for example, 250 555 0199, a fictional number, could be written as (250) 555-0199, 250-555-0199, 250-5550199, or 250/555-0199. The modern format for telephone numbers globally is +1NPAXXXXXXX with no spaces, hyphens or other character. The Government of Canada's

Translation Bureau The Translation Bureau is an institution of the federal government of Canada operated by Public Services and Procurement Canada that provides translation services for all agencies, boards, commissions, and departments of the government. As of Decemb ...

recommends using hyphens between groups, e.g. 250-555-0199.

References

External links

Canadian Number Administrator website

GSM access in Canada
by GSM World / GSMA Mobile World Congress {{North America topic, Telephone numbers in Telecommunications in Canada

Canada Canada is a country in North America. Its ten provinces and three territories extend from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean and northward into the Arctic Ocean, covering over , making it the world's second-largest country by tot ...

Canada communications-related lists

Mobile phones

Toll-free and premium numbers

Formatting

See also

References

External links