Area codes 204 and 431

Area codes 204 and 431 are telephone area codes in the North American Numbering Plan (NANP) for the entire Canadian province of Manitoba. 204 is one of the original North American area codes assigned in 1947.

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

The incumbent local exchange carrier for the area codes is Bell MTS.

In 2009 the Canadian Numbering Administrator forecast that area code 204 would be exhausted within a few years, even though there are only 1.2 million people in the entire province. While an area code provides c. 7.8 million telephone numbers, Canada uses an allocation scheme which allots all 10,000 numbers of a central office prefix to competitive local exchange carriers even for the smallest hamlets, rather than implementing methods of number pooling. Once a number is allocated to a rate centre, it is not possible to reassign it elsewhere, even when a rate centre has more than enough numbers to service it. The exhaustion was caused by the proliferation of cell phones, particularly in and around Winnipeg.

In July 2010, the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission approved a province-wide overlay with area code 431, for implementation in November 2012.[1] On July 30, 2012, 10-digit dialing became mandatory throughout the province.[2] Although this had the effect of allocating c. 15.6 million numbers to a province of just over 1.2 million people, MTS and other carriers in the province preferred this method to a geographical split that would have seen one part of the province retain 204 and another part receive 431 as a new area code. The province's telephone companies wanted to spare Manitobans, particularly in rural areas, the expense and burden of changing telephone numbers.

In February 2017, area code 584 was reserved as a third area code for the region.[3]