The end of 604: BC is running out of phone numbers
Posted November 3, 2010 6:52 pm.
This article is more than 5 years old.
VANCOUVER (NEWS1130) – Sometime in the next couple of years BC will be getting another new telephone area code.
The 778 area codes were introduced less than a decade ago. The 250 came along in 1996, as we ran out of the traditional 604 digits.
Experts say we’re going to run out of telephone numbers here in BC by August of 2016. Shawn Hall with Telus says it’s not population growth, but technology that’s driving the demand for new numbers. “It’s not uncommon for people to have four, five, even six or seven phone numbers nowadays. You’ve got your home number, your work cell phone, your personal cell phone, maybe you’ve got a blackberry or an iPhone in addition to that.”
The federal regulator is setting up a committee to figure out what to do. There will be public consultations, but no dates have been announced just yet.
