Phone prefixes in Thunder Bay, ON

In numbers

In-service prefixes

67

Telephone numbers covered

670,000

Carriers

11

Area codes

1

Provinces and territories

1

First assignment

December 22, 1999

Most recent assignment

May 30, 2025

Thunder Bay’s share of its area code

Within area code 807, Thunder Bay takes 67 of 293 prefixes (22.9%), a substantial slice of a code shared by 85 rate centres, the largest of them Thunder Bay.

Who holds these numbers

Thunder Bay Telephone holds the largest share at 23 prefixes, 34.3% of the total, ahead of 10 other carriers. Code by code: in 807, Thunder Bay Telephone leads with 23 of 67 prefixes ahead of 10 others.

Wireless and wireline

23 of Thunder Bay’s 67 prefixes (34.3%) are held by carriers whose registered name marks a wireless business: Rogers Communications Canada Inc. (Wireless), Bell Mobility, TELUS Mobility and Fido Solutions Inc. Wireline prefixes still outnumber them, carried by Thunder Bay Telephone, Iristel Inc, Bell Canada and Shaw Telecom Inc. This is a sort by name, not a licence lookup, and a mobile prefix may have been ported to another network since.

How the allocation was built up

Thunder Bay’s dated assignments run from 1999 to 2025. The busiest period was 2010–2014, when 11 prefixes went to 4 carriers. 24 prefixes (36%) carry no date in the register: these are the historic pre-1999 assignments, the wireline bedrock of the rate centre. Since 2020 another 12 prefixes have been added, so the rate centre is still growing.

Thunder Bay’s oldest prefixes, the ones the register leaves undated, belong to Thunder Bay Telephone and Bell Canada: these carriers made up the landscape before competition arrived. The first dated assignment went to Rogers Communications Canada Inc. (Wireless) in 1999. The most recent arrivals are Bell Canada (2025), Distributel (2022) and TELUS Integrated Communications (2019), a sign that new carriers are still asking for numbers in Thunder Bay.

Thunder Bay’s 67 prefixes provide 670,000 numbers, which corresponds to a mid-sized city or a well-established suburb that every major carrier wants a slice of.

No single carrier dominates Thunder Bay: the leader, Thunder Bay Telephone, holds only 34.3% of the prefixes against 10 competitors, a sign of a highly fragmented market where cable companies, mobility brands and VoIP providers weigh as much as the incumbent.

Demand remains steady: 27.9% of the dated prefixes go back to the last ten years, the most active period being 2010–2014. The rate centre is growing at a regular rather than explosive pace.

24 undated in the register.

Dialling a Thunder Bay number

A single area code, 807, covers Thunder Bay, 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 +1 807 and the seven-digit number.

The numbering neighbourhood

Thunder Bay shares area code 807 with at least 20 other rate centres, including Kenora, Fort Frances, Dryden, Marathon, Nipigon, Atikokan, Geraldton and Sioux Lookout. The largest of them, Kenora, holds 31 prefixes in 807; the smallest on the list, Jaffray-Melick, has just 2.

What a Thunder Bay number tells you

A number attached to Thunder Bay tells you that its prefix was issued to a carrier for this rate centre in Ontario, most often Thunder Bay Telephone. It does not tell you where the handset is today: a subscriber may have ported the number to any of the 11 carriers present here or to a VoIP service usable anywhere. Nor does it tell you who is calling: caller ID can be spoofed, and an Ontario area code is easy to borrow to look local.

Reading a register entry for Thunder Bay: code 807-343 is recorded for Thunder Bay Telephone, so every 807-343-XXXX number (10,000 possible) descends from that assignment. “Thunder Bay, Ontario” there names a rate centre, not a municipality.

Every Thunder Bay prefix

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

Allocated prefixes

All 67 in-service prefixes, grouped by rate centre.

Elsewhere in Ontario