Area codes 819, 873, and 468

Major cities in the territory include Gatineau, Sherbrooke, Trois-Rivières, Drummondville, Shawinigan, Victoriaville, Rouyn-Noranda, Val-d'Or, Magog and Mont-Laurier.

In the 1960s and the 1970s, telephone service was introduced by Bell Canada at other locations in the eastern Northwest Territories and along the Quebec Arctic coastline, as well as by Sotel, an independent company, in the James Bay region.

In Canada, even tiny hamlets are a rate centres, with multiple competitive local exchange carriers being issued 10,000-number blocks, each of which corresponds to a single three-digit prefix.

Larger cities had multiple rate centres, most of which were not amalgamated during the creation of "megacities" in Quebec in 2002 and still remain separate.

That resulted in thousands of "wasted" numbers, and the proliferation of cell phones and pagers have exacerbated the problem.

Ten-digit dialling became mandatory in both area codes, 819 and 613, on October 21, 2006, and exchange protection was largely ended.

The only legacy of the old system is a "dual dialability" scheme for federal government numbers in the National Capital Region.

There is no number pooling in Canada, and redundant telephone exchange rate centres are not merged when the underlying municipalities are amalgamated.