Area code 780


Area code 780 is a telephone area code in the province of Alberta, encompassing the northern two-thirds of the province, including the Edmonton area. The code was established in 1999; prior to this date the entire province was served by the 403 area code.
Although Alberta would have likely needed another area code in any event due to its rapid growth in the second half of the 20th century, the 1999 split was hastened by Canada's number allocation system. Every local exchange carrier is allocated blocks of 10,000 numbers, each block corresponding to a single prefix, for every rate centre where they plan to offer service, even for the smallest hamlets. While most rate centres do not need nearly that many numbers, it is not possible to move a number from one rate centre to another. This resulted in thousands of wasted numbers, and the proliferation of cell phones and pagers, especially in Calgary and Edmonton, accelerated the exhaustion of numbers. The same problem forced the split of 780 in 1997, only two years after the territories were split off as area code 867.
The 780 phone code started use on January 25, 1999. Generally, everything north and west of Ponoka switched to 780. Permissive dialing of 403 continued throughout Alberta until May 18, 1999. Area code 780 is also the last new area code in Canada introduced by a split.
This was intended as a long-term solution, but within less than a decade, both 403 and 780 were on the brink of exhaustion, again due to the number allocation problem. To solve the problem, area code 587 was implemented as an overlay for all of Alberta. Optional provincewide 10-digit dialing began on June 23, 2008 and became mandatory on September 12, 2008. The alternative would have been a split that could potentially have resulted in portions of Alberta having to change their numbers for the second time in a decade.
The incumbent local exchange carrier in 780 is Telus. Until its merger with Telus in 1995, over three years prior to the startup of 780, the municipally owned Edmonton Telephones served as an ILEC.

Communities included

The projected exhaust date for area code 780 was October 2009. A new area code, 587, was introduced on September 12, 2008. The 780 area code, simultaneously with area code 403, was overlaid with the new area code, which will cover the entire province. The assignment of 587 numbers in 780 and 403 territory began on September 19, 2008.