The dialling codes of all cities and provinces, except Hanoi and HCM City, will change to a three-digit number early next year.

The process will kick off after Tet (Lunar New Year) holidays, on February 11, the Ministry of Information and Communications (MoIC) announced yesterday.

The calling codes of Da Nang and 12 other provinces will change then. Another 23 localities will get new codes on April 15. The final phase will be initiated on June 17 for the rest of the country.

People will be able to use both the old and the new codes for a month after the change, following which the old codes will stop working. 

The MoIC said its aim is to make all area codes uniformly three digits; currently there are one-, two- and three-digit codes. With the new codes, all phones numbers will have 11 numbers; they range from 10 to 11 now. 

The ministry will use the opportunity to renumber phone codes based on geographical location. Provinces in the north-western region, for example, will have their codes begin with 21. The north-eastern region above Hà Nội will have the new code of 20x, while the sub-Hanoi region’s will be 22x.  

The dialling codes of the upper half of the central region will begin with 23, while it will be 25 for the lower half. 

The new code for provinces in the central highlands will be 26x, in the south-eastern region it will be 27x, while in the south-western region it will be 29x. 

Hanoi and HCM City will be the only two cities to have two-digit codes of 24 and 28, respectively. The codes of the three central cities of Can Tho, Da Nang and Hai Phong will be 292, 236 and 225, respectively. 

VNS