Phone prefixes in Change Islands, NL

In numbers

In-service prefixes

1

Telephone numbers covered

10,000

Carriers

1

Area codes

1

Provinces and territories

1

Change Islands’s share of its area code

Within area code 709, Change Islands accounts for only 1 of 631 prefixes (0.2%): the code is dominated by St. John's and spread over 209 rate centres.

Who holds these numbers

Aliant Telecom (NF) holds every prefix here. Code by code: Aliant Telecom (NF) is the only holder in 709.

Wireless and wireline

None of Change Islands’s holders carries a mobility brand in its registered name: all 1 prefixes belong to wireline or wholesale carriers, among them Aliant Telecom (NF). A call showing a Change Islands number therefore nominally comes from a landline, cable or VoIP platform rather than a locally assigned cellphone.

How the allocation was built up

The register dates none of Change Islands’s assignments: all 1 prefixes predate CNAC’s record-keeping, the signature of an old, settled network where nothing has been added in decades.

Aliant Telecom (NF) is the only carrier ever recorded for Change Islands: no competitor has obtained a prefix here. A single-carrier rate centre is typical of small communities where only the incumbent ever built a network.

Change Islands has just 1 prefix (10,000 numbers): a very small rate centre, typical of a village or rural area served by a single switching office.

The local market is an allocation monopoly: Aliant Telecom (NF) holds every prefix, and no competitor has ever requested a code for Change Islands.

Dialling a Change Islands number

A single area code, 709, covers Change Islands, and it is not overlaid with any other code on this territory: one of the few parts of Canada where seven-digit local dialling may still work. From abroad, dial +1 709 and the seven-digit number.

The numbering neighbourhood

Change Islands shares area code 709 with at least 20 other rate centres, including St. John's, Corner Brook, Clarenville, Carbonear, Gander, Marystown, Bay Roberts and Labrador City - Wabush. The largest of them, St. John's, holds 100 prefixes in 709; the smallest on the list, Glovertown, has just 5.

What a Change Islands number tells you

A number attached to Change Islands tells you that its prefix was issued to a carrier for this rate centre in Newfoundland and Labrador, most often Aliant Telecom (NF). It does not tell you where the handset is today: a subscriber may have ported the number to any of the 1 carriers present here or to a VoIP service usable anywhere. Nor does it tell you who is calling: caller ID can be spoofed, and a Newfoundland and Labrador area code is easy to borrow to look local.

Reading a register entry for Change Islands: code 709-621 is recorded for Aliant Telecom (NF), so every 709-621-XXXX number (10,000 possible) descends from that assignment. “Change Islands, Newfoundland and Labrador” there names a rate centre, not a municipality.

Every Change Islands prefix

Each row is an in-service central-office code recorded for Change Islands, with its original holder and year of assignment.

Allocated prefixes

All 1 in-service prefixes, grouped by rate centre.

Elsewhere in Newfoundland and Labrador