Path: utzoo!telecom-request Date: Sun, 5 May 91 09:46 EDT From: Nigel Allen Newsgroups: comp.dcom.telecom Subject: Re: 416 to Split to 416 and 905, October 4th, 1993 Message-ID: Organization: 52 Manchester Avenue, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M6G 1V3 Sender: Telecom@eecs.nwu.edu Approved: Telecom@eecs.nwu.edu X-Submissions-To: telecom@eecs.nwu.edu X-Administrivia-To: telecom-request@eecs.nwu.edu X-Telecom-Digest: Volume 11, Issue 335, Message 3 of 8 Lines: 37 As Mark Brader points out, area code 416 will serve precisely the Municipality of Metropolitan Toronto, which includes the cities of Toronto, York, Etobicoke, Scarborough and North York, and the Borough of East York. All these cities have been a single Bell Canada exchange, Toronto, for a good many years, although I prize my 1953 Toronto-area phone book which lists manual telephone numbers for Agincourt (then a rural community in northern Scarborough, now just icky suburban sprawl). Metropolitan Toronto is responsible for some municipal services, such as transit, police and ambulance services, while the area municipalities (Toronto city, North York, etc.) handle garbage collection, fire-fighting, etc. Anyway, the delightful coincidence about the new area code boundary coinciding with a political boundary brings with it a further coincidence: Since Canadian postal codes begin with a letter assigned by geography (A = Newfoundland and Labrador, B = Nova Scotia... Y = Yukon), and since Metropolitan Toronto postal codes all begin with M (I'm M6G 1V3) while the areas adjacent to Metro Toronto have codes beginning with L, the postal code boundary coincides with the new area code boundary. If your postal code begins M, you remain in 416; if you are now in 416 and your postal code begins with L, you switch to 905. I mention this because some U.S. readers observed that new area code boundaries in Maryland would not coincide with zip code boundaries. Nigel Allen ndallen@contact.uucp [Moderator's Note: This is about the same thing that happened here in Chicago. 312 is exclusive to postal code 606xx, while 708 is found in the 600, 601, 604, and 605xx areas. PAT]