Did you know there is something called the “Canadian Number Administrator?”
I didn’t. And it’s not one guy either. It’s a bunch of people working for the telecommunications industry, and who are overseen by the CRTC, who distribute phone numbers and manage our area code system. And because of a growing population and so many cell phones, once again they are running out of numbers, meaning more area codes are coming your way!
Starting next month the Toronto area will add 437, while Ontario’s Golden Horseshoe will add the code 365. Saskatchewan will be up next in May – adding area code 639 — followed by British Columbia with 236. Alberta is also expected to get a new three-digit prefix.
Last November, Manitoba joined the 21st century and introduced 10-digit dialing for the first time.
As of June 2013 there will be 36 area codes in service nationwide. At the bottom of this post, I’ve attached a map from the CNA (Yes, they have their own abbreviation even!) which shows what that will look like.
I don’t know if you remember, but when 10-digit dialing and new area codes were introduced in the past, folks became really upset. Call-in shows were inundated with cries of “How can we possibly remember all these numbers?” or, “I have to dial ten digits now? Are they kidding me?”
Did she even have a phone?
Remember, these were the days when you actually had to physically dial a phone, and even though it sounds staggeringly lazy to complain about three extra digital twists, (okay, it is staggeringly lazy!), it was an added inconvenience.
And regardless of what it is, any added inconvenience would induce even Mother Teresa to whine maybe a little bit, (but with great humility).
Those days are gone however. If you’re still dialing, you are either a centenarian or a complete kook. The rest of us haven’t “dialed” a phone in decades.
And most of us rarely if ever use our touch-tone keypad either. Redialing, favorite lists, recently dialed number lists and smartphones means we don’t key in anything hardly.
I can remember what my first girlfriend’s phone number from when I was 13, (Anne Vankoughnet at 634-7521, what ever happened to you?) but because I programmed my wife’s work number into my phone 10 years ago and haven’t had to know it since, I couldn’t remember it if you held a gun to my head.
No, the addition of all these new area codes should be welcomed with a collective, “meh,” but of course, since this is the real world, they won’t.
There will be whining. The folks in Worldline‘s call center will have to be ready for it.
They just won’t believe it.
Having been established in 1880, Ma Bell was all on its own providing telephone service for more than 100 years. Essentially functioning as a monopoly, Bell Canada had virtually a 100% market share from sea to shining sea. That was until the 1980’s, when the federal government decided that for the country as a whole, and its people in particular, this probably wasn’t the greatest of ideas.