Area Code 867

Area code 867 is the area code in the North American Numbering Plan (NANP) for the three Canadian territories, all of which are in Northern Canada. The area code was created on October 21, 1997, by combining numbering plan areas (NPAs) 403 and 819. As the least populated NPA in mainland North America, serving about 100,000 people, it is geographically the largest, at , with Alaska a distant second.

The numbering plan area is adjacent to eight provinces (Alberta, British Columbia, Manitoba, Newfoundland and Labrador, Ontario, Saskatchewan, and Quebec) and one U.S. state (Alaska), as well as Greenland and Russia (across the North Pole), more jurisdictions than any other area code in North America. It is also one of four Canadian area codes without an overlay numbering plan, the others being 506, 709 (both of which are slated for overlays), and 807.

The incumbent local exchange carrier for area code 867 is Northwestel, a subsidiary of BCE. Until 1964, the geographic area served today by 867 had up to five independent telephone companies, as well as Bell Canada.

History

In 1947, Alberta was assigned area code 403 in the first continent-wide telephone numbering plan by the American Telephone and Telegraph Company (AT&T). When service became available from local telephone companies, Yukon and the west of the Northwest Territories were included in the Alberta numbering plan area. These companies were eventually merged into Canadian National Telecommunications, a subsidiary of the Canadian National Railway. CNT's operations in the territories became Northwestel in 1979.

The eastern Northwest Territories were among the last areas of North America without telephone service. When the area code system was created, the region was nominally part of western Quebec's area code 514. In 1957, those non-diallable areas were nominally shifted to eastern Quebec's area code 418. Bell Canada introduced telephone service in the eastern Northwest Territories in 1958. As direct distance dialing was rolled out in this area in the 1970s, the eastern Northwest Territories and a large swath of northwestern Quebec were shifted to western Quebec's area code 819. Bell Canada sold its northern service territory to Northwestel in 1992.

Until area code 867 was created, area codes 403 and 819 had been geographically the two largest in the North American Numbering Plan. Area code 403 spanned more than one ninth of the planet's circumference, and area code 819 spanned one eighth.

Since the creation of area code 867, all of the former 819 portion of the Northwest Territories, as well as the portion of the former 403 portion covering five exchanges, has become part of Nunavut. Area code 403, covering Alberta, has since been further split to create area code 780 for the northern two thirds of Alberta, including Edmonton.

All existing prefixes stayed the same with the change to 867, with one exception. The conflict between 403 and 979 at Inuvik and 819–979 at Iqaluit was resolved by changing Inuvik from 403–979 to 867–777. A minor programming glitch allowed for a few weeks late in 1997 callers in the Inuvik area to dial 403-777 and reach Inuvik when they actually should have routed to Calgary, which appeared on customer's bills, along with the higher rate.

Northwestel's proposal for a new regulatory regime was approved for 2007 to allow resale of local telephone service, but no competitors entered the market to avail themselves of the resale option. In 2011, facilities-based local service competition was approved by the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) and so additional central office codes are now required for competitive carriers wishing to offer local service. The expense limits deployment so far to Whitehorse, Yellowknife, Inuvik, Behchokǫ̀, Aklavik and Hay River, four of which already have multiple prefixes. Communities that now have only one prefix are not likely to need a second prefix other than for local growth or the entry of a competitor (as in Aklavik and the twin Behchokǫ̀ communities, Rae-Edzo*).

The sparsely-populated area is unlikely to exhaust numbers in the foreseeable future. However, in June 2021, the CRTC recommended implementing the three-digit code 9-8-8, which is already in use as a local exchange in the Yellowknife area, as the nationwide number for suicide prevention hotlines, which would imply the need to implement ten-digit dialing in area code 867. The CRTC decision followed the decision of the US Federal Communications Commission to adopt 9-8-8 as the number for the US National Suicide Prevention Lifeline. In August 2022, the CRTC finalized its implementation plans for 9-8-8, effective November 30, 2023; it accepted a request from Northwestel to make ten-digit dialing mandatory only in the Yellowknife area and optional elsewhere within the region as of May 31, 2023, in part because it would ease the process of communicating the transition to remote communities and in Indigenous languages.

''* Behchokǫ̀ has two separate exchange areas, each with its own prefix, but Iristel's 292 prefix is overlaid, with both using independent facilities.''

Numbering plan area

Area code 867 is the most expensive geographic calling area in Canada. Iristel (the one major CLEC in the region) bills its subscribers in other area codes a 15¢/minute premium to call 1-867 numbers and charges a $20/year premium to issue a 1-867 number in-region instead of assigning the same subscriber any other Canadian area code.

The digits were reportedly chosen to promote the theme "TOP of the world", as 867 spells TOP on a standard North American keypad. When combined with the NANP international dialing code ''1'', it spells ''1867'', which is the year of Canadian Confederation.

It has the largest land area of any area code in the NANP. The territorial extent reaches from Cape Dyer on Baffin Island to the Alaska border, and from the south end of James Bay to the North Pole. The largest distances between exchanges are from Sanikiluaq to Grise Fiord, and from Beaver Creek to Pangnirtung. Four different official time zones are observed within the area: Eastern, Central, Mountain, and Pacific.

Exchanges

Area code 867 covers all points in the three Canadian territories, the Northwest Territories, Nunavut, and Yukon

Some exchanges in the territories serve some customers in Fraser and Swan Lake, British Columbia (from Carcross and Swift River, respectively). Fitzgerald, Alberta, is served from Fort Smith, Northwest Territories. On a section of the Alaska Highway

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