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Area code 250

Telephone area code serving British Columbia, Canada, and Alaska, US From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

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Area code 250 is a telephone area code in the North American Numbering Plan (NANP) for the Canadian province of British Columbia outside the Lower Mainland, including Vancouver Island–home to the provincial capital, Victoria–and the province's Interior region. In addition, the numbering plan area extends into the United States community of Hyder, Alaska, located along the Canada–United States border near the town of Stewart. The incumbent local exchange carriers that service the area code are Telus, Northwestel, and CityWest in the city of Prince Rupert.

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Area code 250 was created on October 19, 1996, as a split of area code 604, which was retained by the Lower Mainland.[1] Prior to 1996, 604 had been the sole area code in British Columbia for almost half a century. British Columbia would have likely needed another area code in any event because of the province's growth in the second half of the 20th century, but the split was hastened by Canada's system of number allocation. Canada does not use number pooling as a relief measure. Instead, each competitive local exchange carrier is allocated blocks of 10,000 numbers (corresponding to a single prefix) in each rate centre in which it plans to offer service, even in the smallest hamlets. Once a prefix 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 its customers. That has resulted in thousands of wasted numbers, a problem that has been exacerbated by the proliferation of fax machines and pagers and then of cell phones.

By the middle of the first decade of the 2000s, 250 was already on the verge of exhaustion, again because of the number allocation problem and the continued proliferation of cell phones, particularly on Vancouver Island and in the larger cities of the interior. Amid projections that 250 would be exhausted by January 2008, the Canadian Radio-Television and Telecommunications Commission began considering relief options in early 2007. Proposals included:[2]

Several of the major landline and wireless providers in the 250 territory strongly favoured an overlay and stated that it would be easier to implement than a split. They also wanted to spare themselves and their customers the expense and burden of changing their numbers, which would have required a massive reprogramming of cell phones.[3] The proposal for a split would have forced Vancouver Island's residents to change their numbers for a second time in a decade.[2]

The CRTC announced on June 7, 2007 that 778 would be expanded to become an overlay for the entire province starting that July 4. On that date, exchanges in 778 became available to Vancouver Island and interior residents, and a permissive dialling period began across British Columbia during which it was possible to make local calls with either seven or ten digits.[4] Three CO prefixes in the 250 area code were reserved for use by Northwestel, as 13 of its 15 switches could not then handle multiple area codes, and its system could not accommodate ten-digit-dialling.[3]

The CRTC decided on an overlay after concluding that there was not enough time to implement a split before 250 was due to exhaust in January 2008.[3] Effective June 23, 2008, ten-digit dialling became mandatory throughout the entire province, and attempts to make a seven-digit call triggered an intercept message with a reminder of the new rule. After September 12, 2008, seven-digit dialling no longer functioned.[5] Overlays have become the preferred method of area code relief in Canada, as they are an easy workaround for the number allocation problem, as opposed to a split plan.

On June 1, 2013, area code 236 was implemented as a distributed overlay of area codes 250, 604, and 778 and was expected to be exhausted by May 2020.[6] As a result, area code 672 was implemented on May 4, 2019, as an additional distributed overlay to relieve area codes 250, 604, 778, and 236.[6]

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Service area and central office codes

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