B.C. is getting a new area code this weekend

Shaki Sutharsan · CBC News

· Posted: May 21, 2025 4:30 PM EDT | Last Updated: 4 hours ago

If you're readying connected opening a caller telephone enactment this weekend, you mightiness beryllium 1 of the archetypal successful B.C. to person a fig with the caller 257 country code. 

The caller country codification volition beryllium added to B.C.'s roster starting Saturday. It volition articulation the existing codes 236, 250, 604, 672 and 778 successful servicing residents passim the province. The caller country codification volition person nary interaction connected existing telephone numbers. 

Who comes up with caller country codes?

The determination was made by the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) successful 2023, aft the Canadian Numbering Administrator (CNA) advised that the country codes servicing B.C. were "projected to exhaust" by May 2026. 

The CNA is liable for assigning Central Office (CO) codes — which are the mediate 3 numbers of a telephone fig — wrong a caller country codification to telephone work providers erstwhile a determination has been made by the CRTC. 

CNA program manager Kelly Walsh says telephone work providers can use for circumstantial CO codes around 66 days earlier the alleviation implementation date, which is erstwhile a caller country codification is acceptable to spell into effect. For 257, that's this Saturday.

Walsh says some work providers similar to inquire for "cool numbers" similar 777, 377, 277 and numbers successful the hundreds series, similar 700, 500 and 200.

What's happening to the aged ones?

The CRTC decided to adhd the 257 country codification to B.C.'s premix due to the fact that the imaginable telephone numbers wrong the existing area codes successful the state person started to tally out. 

The caller country codification volition beryllium implemented via the "distributed overlay method" where new codes are issued to the aforesaid geographical country arsenic pre-existing codes, meaning customers don't person to alteration their numbers.

With this caller country code, millions of caller telephone numbers tin beryllium created, according to the Telecommunications Alliance, a radical of Canada's large telecom service providers that person joined forces to inform the nationalist astir the instauration of caller country codes.