Area codes 418, 581, and 367 are telephone

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 ...

s in the

North American Numbering Plan The North American Numbering Plan (NANP) is an integrated 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, World Numbering Zone ...

(NANP) for the eastern portion of the Canadian province of

Quebec Quebec is Canada's List of Canadian provinces and territories by area, largest province by area. Located in Central Canada, the province shares borders with the provinces of Ontario to the west, Newfoundland and Labrador to the northeast, ...

. Area code 418 was originally assigned to the numbering plan area, but all three area codes now form an

overlay plan In telecommunications, an area code overlay complex is a telephone numbering plan that assigns multiple area codes to the same geographic numbering plan area (NPA). Area code overlays are implemented in territories of the North American Numbe ...

for this territory. Cities in the numbering plan area include

Quebec City Quebec City is the capital city of the Provinces and territories of Canada, Canadian province of Quebec. As of July 2021, the city had a population of 549,459, and the Census Metropolitan Area (including surrounding communities) had a populati ...

, Saguenay,

Lévis Lévis () is a city in eastern Quebec, Canada, located on the south shore of the St. Lawrence River, opposite Quebec City. A ferry links Old Quebec with Old Lévis, and two bridges, the Quebec Bridge and the Pierre-Laporte Bridge, connect we ...

Rimouski Rimouski ( ; ) is a city in Quebec, Canada. Rimouski is located in the Bas-Saint-Laurent region, at the mouth of the Rimouski River. It has a population of 48,935 (as of 2021). Rimouski, whose motto is ''Legi patrum fidelis'' (Faithful to ...

, Saint-Georges,

Alma Alma or ALMA may refer to: Arts and entertainment * ''Alma'' (film), a 2009 Spanish short animated film * ''Alma'', an upcoming film by Sally Potter * ''Alma'' (Oswald de Andrade novel), 1922 * ''Alma'' (Le Clézio novel), 2017 * ''Alma'' ( ...

Thetford Mines Thetford Mines (; Canada 2021 Census population 26,072) is a city in south-central Quebec, Canada. It is the seat of Les Appalaches Regional County Municipality. The city is located in the Appalachian Mountains, 187 km east-northeast of Mo ...

, Sept-Îles,

Baie-Comeau Baie-Comeau () is a city in the Côte-Nord region of the province of Quebec, Canada. It is located on the shores of the St. Lawrence River, and is the seat of Manicouagan Regional County Municipality. It is near the mouth of the Manicouagan Ri ...

and

Rivière-du-Loup Rivière-du-Loup (; 2021 population 20,118) is a small city (Quebec), city on the south shore of the Saint Lawrence River in Quebec. The city is the seat for the Rivière-du-Loup Regional County Municipality and the Judicial districts of Quebec ...

. Also served are the

Gaspé Peninsula The Gaspé Peninsula, also known as Gaspesia (, ; ), is a peninsula along the south shore of the St. Lawrence River that extends from the Matapedia Valley in Quebec, Canada, into the Gulf of St. Lawrence. It is separated from New Brunswick on it ...

Côte-Nord Côte-Nord (Region 09) (, ; ) is an List of regions of Quebec, administrative region of Quebec, on the Quebec-Labrador peninsula, Quebec-Labrador Peninsula, Canada. The region runs along the St. Lawrence River and then the Gulf of St. Lawrence, ...

, southeastern

Mauricie Mauricie () is a traditional and current administrative region of Quebec. La Mauricie National Park is contained within the region, making tourism in Mauricie popular. The region has a land area of 35,860.05 km2 (13,845.64 sq mi) and a popu ...

, and the tiny hamlet of Estcourt Station, in the

U.S. state In the United States, a state is a constituent political entity, of which there are 50. Bound together in a political union, each state holds governmental jurisdiction over a separate and defined geographic territory where it shares its so ...

Maine Maine ( ) is a U.S. state, state in the New England region of the United States, and the northeasternmost state in the Contiguous United States. It borders New Hampshire to the west, the Gulf of Maine to the southeast, and the Provinces and ...

History

Ontario and Quebec were the only provinces that received assignments of multiple area codes by the

American Telephone and Telegraph Company AT&T Corporation, an abbreviation for its former name, the American Telephone and Telegraph Company, was an American telecommunications company that provided voice, video, data, and Internet telecommunications and professional services to busi ...

(AT&T) when the

original North American area codes The original North American area codes were established by the American Telephone and Telegraph Company (AT&T) in 1947. The assignment was in accord with the design of a uniform nationwide telephone numbering plan that supported the goal of dialin ...

were created in 1947. The eastern part of Quebec received area code 418, while

area code 514 Area is the measure of a region's size on a surface. The area of a plane region or ''plane area'' refers to the area of a shape or planar lamina, while ''surface area'' refers to the area of an open surface or the boundary of a three-dimen ...

was assigned for the western part. Nominally, northwestern Quebec, one of the few areas of North America without telephone service, was reassigned from area code 514 to area code 418 in 1957. From the 1950s to the 1970s, area code 418 was also the area code for the eastern

Northwest Territories The Northwest Territories is a federal Provinces and territories of Canada, territory of Canada. At a land area of approximately and a 2021 census population of 41,070, it is the second-largest and the most populous of Provinces and territorie ...

. However, in the 1970s, as direct distance dialling was introduced to the far northern and western portions of 418, those areas were reassigned to

area code 819 Area codes 819, 873, and 468 are overlay telephone area codes in the North American Numbering Plan (NANP) for central and western Quebec, Canada, including the Quebec portion of the National Capital Region, and the Hudson Strait and Ungava Bay ...

. Despite Quebec City's rapid growth, by the turn of the millennium, area code 418 was the last of Quebec and Ontario's original four area codes not to have been split. By 2006, however, area code 418 was on the brink of exhaustion because of Canada's system of number allocation. Every

competitive local exchange carrier A competitive local exchange carrier (CLEC) is a North American telecommunications provider classification that emerged based on the competition model of the Telecommunications Act of 1996 in the United States. The act required the previously esta ...

is allocated blocks of 10,000 numbers, which correspond to a single three-digit

prefix A prefix is an affix which is placed before the stem of a word. Particularly in the study of languages, a prefix is also called a preformative, because it alters the form of the word to which it is affixed. Prefixes, like other affixes, can b ...

, for every rate centre in which it plans to offer service, even for small hamlets. Once a number is assigned to a carrier and rate centre, it cannot be moved elsewhere even if a rate centre has more than enough numbers to serve it. That resulted in thousands of wasted numbers, a problem that was worsened by the proliferation of cellphones and pagers, especially in the larger cities. Additionally, a number of "megacities" created in 2002 are split between multiple rate centres, which have never been amalgamated. For example, Saguenay is split between four rate centres. In 2007, the

CRTC The Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC; ) is a public organization in Canada tasked with the mandate as a regulatory agency tribunal for various electronic communications, covering broadcasting and telecommunic ...

assigned area code 581 as an overlay for 418. The implementation of area code 581 began on June 21, 2008 with the start of a

permissive dialing In North America, permissive dialing is the ability to make phone calls in an area subject to a newly introduced area code by using both the new and preexisting dialing methods. When an area is given a new area code under a split plan, the area's ...

period during which local calls could be made with both seven and ten digits.

Ten-digit dialing Ten-digit dialing is a telephone dialing procedure in the countries and territories of the North American Numbering Plan (NANP). It is the practice of including the area code of a telephone number when Dialling (telephony), dialing to initiate a t ...

became mandatory in eastern Quebec on September 6, 2008. By 2016, area codes 418 and 581 were again on the brink of exhaustion because of the further proliferation of cell phones and pagers. In 2017, the CRTC assigned area code 367 as a second overlay for eastern Quebec. It entered service in 2018. That had the effect of assigning 23.4 million numbers to only 1.8 million people. However, overlays have become the preferred method of relief in Canada, as they are an easy workaround for the number allocation problem. No area codes have been split in the country since 1999. The major incumbent local exchange carriers in the area are

Bell Canada Bell Canada (commonly referred to as Bell) is a Canadian telecommunications company headquartered at 1 Carrefour Alexander-Graham-Bell in the borough of Verdun, Quebec, in Canada. It is an ILEC (incumbent local exchange carrier) in the province ...

Bell Aliant Bell Aliant is a brand name used by Bell Canada for Telecommunications in Canada, telecommunications services in Atlantic Canada. Prior to 2015, Bell Aliant Inc. (formerly Aliant Inc.) was a separate company providing telecom services in the Atl ...

Telus Telus may refer to: * Telus Corporation, a Canadian publicly traded holding company ** Telus Communications, a telecommunications company ** Telus Digital, a technology company ** Telus Health, a health technology provider ** Telus Mobility T ...

(formerly Quebec-Telephone) and

Vidéotron Vidéotron is a Canadian integrated telecommunications company founded in 1964. It's active in cable television, interactive multimedia development, video on demand, cable telephony, wireless communication and Internet access services. Owned by Qu ...

Places and central office codes

Adstock ''For the municipality in Quebec, see Adstock, Quebec'' Adstock is a village and civil parish about northwest of Winslow and southeast of Buckingham in the Aylesbury Vale district of Buckinghamshire. The 2001 Census recorded a parish popul ...

: (418) 422 (581) 634 * Aguanish: (418) 533 (581) 299 * Albanel: (418) 279 501 (581) 601 *

Albertville Albertville (; Franco-Provençal, Arpitan: ''Arbèrtvile'') is a Subprefectures in France, subprefecture of the Savoie Departments of France, department in the Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes Regions of France, region in Southeastern France. It is best k ...

: see Causapscal *

: (418) 212 301 319 321 347 442 450 480 481 482 487 662 668 669 719 720 758 769 (581) 200 216 230 265 431 533 598 728 828 *

Amqui Amqui (; ) is a town in eastern Quebec, Canada, at the base of the Gaspé peninsula in Bas-Saint-Laurent. Located at the confluence of the Humqui and Matapédia Rivers, it is the seat of La Matapédia Regional County Municipality. The main acce ...

: (418) 330 629 631 713 (581) 335 *

Armagh Armagh ( ; , , " Macha's height") is a city and the county town of County Armagh, in Northern Ireland, as well as a civil parish. It is the ecclesiastical capital of Ireland – the seat of the Archbishops of Armagh, the Primates of All ...

: (418) 466 (581) 328 * Auclair: see Témiscouata-sur-le-Lac *

: (418) 280 282 293 294 295 296 297 298 378 445 589 921 (581) 381 642 726 823 829 929 987 *

Baie-des-Sables Baie-des-Sables () is a municipality in La Matanie Regional County Municipality in the Bas-Saint-Laurent region of Quebec, Canada. Its elevation is . History The area was originally part of the Mitis seignory, purchased by Mathew MacNider in 18 ...

: (418) 772 (581) 396 * Baie-Johan-Beetz: (418) 539 (581) 298 *

Baie-Saint-Paul Baie-Saint-Paul (; 2021 Population 7,371; UA population 4,308) is a city in the Province of Quebec, Canada, on the northern shore of the St. Lawrence River. Baie-Saint-Paul is the seat of Charlevoix Regional County Municipality. The city i ...

: (418) 200 219 240 435 436 760 (581) 237 * Baie-Sainte-Catherine: (418) 237 (581) 236 * Baie-Trinité: (418) 920 939 * Batiscan: see Sainte-Geneviève-de-Batiscan * Beauceville: (418) 217 774 (581) 420 813 * Beaulac-Garthby: (418) 458 (581) 228 330 835 * Beaumont: see Lévis * Beaupré: (418) 702 746 827 * Bégin: see Saint-Ambroise * Berthier-sur-Mer: see Saint-François-de-la-Rivière-du-Sud * Biencourt: (418) 499 (581) 373 * Blanc-Sablon: (418) 461 (581) 297 *

Boischatel Boischatel () is a municipality in the Capitale-Nationale region of Quebec, Canada. The town was originally called Saint-Jean-de-Boischatel. Geography The town itself is located along the Montmorency River and St. Lawrence River. Near the bound ...

: (418) 406 762 822 (581) 538 *

Bonaventure Bonaventure ( ; ; ; born Giovanni di Fidanza; 1221 – 15 July 1274) was an Italian Catholic Franciscan bishop, Cardinal (Catholic Church), cardinal, Scholasticism, scholastic theologian and philosopher. The seventh Minister General ( ...

: (418) 530 534 (581) 364 630 827 * Bonne-Espérance: (418) 379 (581) 296 *

Cacouna Cacouna () is a municipality in the Rivière-du-Loup Regional County Municipality within the Bas-Saint-Laurent region of Quebec, Canada. It is located on the south shore of the Saint Lawrence River along Route 132. The municipality of Cacouna w ...

: see Rivière-du-Loup * Cap-Chat: (418) 786 (581) 395 * Cap-Saint-Ignace: (418) 246 715 *

Cap-Santé Cap-Santé () is a town in the Canadian province of Quebec. It is the county seat of Portneuf Regional County Municipality and was as well the county seat of the designated Portneuf County, Quebec, Portneuf County. The name of the town means "C ...

: see Donnacona *

Caplan Caplan is a surname. Notable people with the surname include: *Amanita Caplan, ''Sense8'' character *Arthur Caplan, American bioethicist *Bryan Caplan (born 1971), American economist *David Caplan (born 1964), Canadian politician *Elinor Caplan (1 ...

: (418) 388 (581) 363 *

Carleton-sur-Mer Carleton-sur-Mer () is the fifth largest town of the Gaspésie's south shore, in southeastern Quebec, Canada, located on Route 132, along Chaleur Bay. It is the seat of the Avignon Regional County Municipality. The town's territory includes ...

: (418) 364 (581) 362 *

Cascapédia–Saint-Jules Cascapédia–Saint-Jules is a municipality in Quebec, Canada. The municipality includes the communities of Grande-Cascapédia and Saint-Jules, both located along the Cascapédia River. History On June 2, 1999, the Municipalities of Grande-Casc ...

: see New Richmond *

Causapscal Causapscal (; ) is a city in the Provinces and territories of Canada, Canadian province of Quebec, located in La Matapédia Regional County Municipality. It is located at the confluence of the Matapédia River, Matapédia and Causapscal Rivers, al ...

: (418) 756 (581) 394 * Chambord: (418) 342 491 (581) 602 816 * Chandler: (418) 398 616 680 689 (581) 361 * Chapais: (418) 745 *

Château-Richer Château-Richer () is a small town situated in the Capitale-Nationale region of Quebec, Canada. Located on the north shore of the Saint Lawrence River east of Quebec City. It is the seat for the Côte-de-Beaupré Regional County Municipality. Th ...

: (418) 824 972 978 *

Chibougamau Chibougamau () is the largest town in Nord-du-Québec, central Quebec, Canada. Located on Lake Gilman, it has a population of 7,233 people (2021 Canadian census). Chibougamau is surrounded by, but not part of, the local municipality of Eeyou ...

: (418) 748 770 (581) 430 445 464 579 627 *

Chute-aux-Outardes Chute-aux-Outardes () is a village municipality in Quebec, Canada, at the mouth of the Outardes River. It is about south-west of Baie-Comeau along Route 138. Demographics In the 2021 Census of Population conducted by Statistics Canada, Ch ...

: see Pessamit * Clermont: (418) 201 439 489 (581) 239 * Cloridorme: (418) 395 (581) 637 * Colombier: (418) 565 (581) 644 *

Côte-Nord-du-Golfe-du-Saint-Laurent Côte-Nord-du-Golfe-du-Saint-Laurent () is a municipality in the regional county municipality of Le Golfe-du-Saint-Laurent in the Côte-Nord region of the province of Quebec, Canada. The municipality consists of two non-contiguous areas, both al ...

: (418) 242 787 795 (581) 293 295 301 * Courcelles-Saint-Évariste: (418) 483 *

Dégelis Dégelis () is a city in Témiscouata Regional County Municipality within the Bas-Saint-Laurent region of Quebec. Its population in the Canada 2021 Census was 2,884. The Madawaska River flows from Lake Témiscouata, through Degelis, to join ...

: (418) 494 853 *

Deschambault-Grondines Deschambault-Grondines () is a municipality located in the Portneuf Regional County Municipality (RCM), in the Capitale-Nationale region, Quebec, Canada. Deschambault-Grondines was created in 2002 by the merger of the villages of Deschambault ...

: see Portneuf * Desbiens: (418) 346 (581) 597 817 *

Disraeli Benjamin Disraeli, 1st Earl of Beaconsfield (21 December 1804 – 19 April 1881) was a British statesman, Conservative politician and writer who twice served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom. He played a central role in the creat ...

: (418) 449 (581) 209 714 *

Dolbeau-Mistassini Dolbeau-Mistassini () is a town in northern Quebec, Canada, at the confluence of the Mistassibi River, Riviere aux Rats and the Mistassini River, on Lac Saint-Jean. Dolbeau-Mistassini is in the Maria-Chapdelaine Regional County Municipality and ...

: (418) 239 276 706 979 (581) 212 596 * Donnacona: (418) 283 284 285 326 462 474 510 552 850 971 (581) 343 377 740 821 833 * Dosquet: see Laurier-Station * East Broughton: (418) 351 427 (581) 331 * Escuminac: see Listuguj * Esprit-Saint: see Lac-des-Aigles *

Essipit Essipit (known as Les Escoumins until 1996) is an Innu Indian reserve in the Canadian province of Quebec, located on the north shore of the Gulf of Saint Lawrence in the Côte-Nord region. It belongs to the Innue Essipit First Nation. The reser ...

: see Les Escoumins *

Estcourt Station, Maine Estcourt Station (elevation: , pop. 4) is a village within the Big Twenty Township in the state of Maine. It is the northernmost point in the United States east of the Great Lakes. The ZIP Code for Estcourt Station is 04741. Although part of ...

- see Pohénégamook * Ferland-et-Boilleau: (418) 676 (581) 382 *

Fermont Fermont (; ) is a mining city in Côte-Nord region, Quebec, Canada, near the Quebec-Labrador border about from Labrador City on Route 389, which connects to the Trans-Labrador Highway (Newfoundland and Labrador Route 500). It is the seat o ...

: (418) 287 (581) 231 444 * Forestville: (418) 578 586 587 989 (581) 623 * Fossambault-sur-le-Lac: see Sainte-Catherine-de-la-Jacques-Cartier * Frampton: (418) 479 (581) 227 426 * Franquelin: see Baie-Comeau * Gaspé: (418) 269 355 360 361 368 819 892 (581) 348 360 635 636 822 832 887 *

Gesgapegiag Gesgapegiag is one of two First Nations reserves on the south shore of the Gaspésie, most of whom are of Mi'kmaq ancestry. Most of the members reside on the federal native reserve that was set aside by the legislature of Lower Canada in 1853, ...

: see Maria *

Girardville Girardville may refer to: * Girardville, Pennsylvania, United States * Girardville, Quebec, Canada {{geodis