(Eagle News) –Starting October 6, all landline customers in Metro Manila and neighboring areas will have eight-digit telephone numbers in accordance with a National Telecommunications directive.
Globe Telecom Inc., and PLDT Inc., had already issued separate advisories announcing their intention to comply with the directive, ) in its memorandum no. 10–10–2017 which orders all telecoms providers in the Metro Manila area to migrate all their customers to eight-digit telephone numbers “to address the insufficient number of assignable exchange codes.”
The migration process will start early morning of October 6 – from 12:01 AM until 5:00 AM.
This change applies to telephone numbers with the area code “02”.
For PLDT, the numeral 8 will be added before the old landline number, while for Globe landline numbers, the numeral 7 will be added.
For Bayantel customers, the numeral to be added before the old number is 3.
This is called the Public Telecommunication Entity (PTE) identifier by the NTC.
It is a prefix assigned by the NTC to a particular telco/service provider to preserve order and quickly identify to which company a number belongs.
“PLDT subscribers and those calling them will have no difficulty adjusting to this number change. All they have to do is add the number ‘8’ at the start of the existing landline number. So, if your existing number is say 123-4567, then it will become 8123-4567,” said PLDT and Smart Public Affairs Head Ramon R. Isberto in an earlier statement.
This covers PLDT customers in Metro Manila and also those in Rizal Province, San Pedro, Laguna, and Bacoor, Cavite, according to PLDT.
Callers from the provinces will only need to do the usual national direct dialing procedure which now includes their Metro Manila contact’s 8 digit number: Dial 0 + Area Code (2) + 8 digit-landline number, an earlier PLDT release said.
Those outside the Philippines will have dial 00 + Country Code (63) + Area Code (2) + 8 digit-landline number.
