Area codes 204, 431, and 584

When the American Telephone and Telegraph Company (AT&T) designed the first comprehensive North American telephone numbering plan in the 1940s, Manitoba was designated as a single numbering plan area (NPA) with area code 204.

In 2009, the Canadian Numbering Administrator forecast that area code 204 would be exhausted within a few years even though there were only 1.2 million people in the entire province.

An area code provides about 7.8 million telephone numbers, but Canada uses an allocation scheme that allots all ten thousand numbers of a central office prefix to competitive local exchange carriers even for the smallest hamlets.

In July 2010, the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission approved a province-wide overlay with area code 431 for implementation in November 2012.

[4][5] The incumbent local exchange carrier for the area codes is Bell MTS.

The area serviced by area codes 204, 431, and 584 in blue with neighbouring provinces, territories, and U.S. states in other colours