Metro PLDT subscribers to have 8-digit phone numbers

MANILA, Philippines — Subscribers of PLDT Inc. in Metro Manila and several nearby provinces will have eight-digit landline numbers starting Oct. 6, the telco giant said yesterday.

PLDT said the migration from the existing seven-digit format to eight digits is in compliance with the directive of the National Telecommunications Commission (NTC) in its memorandum order No. 10-10-2017.

The change applies to telephone numbers with the area code “02” and covers PLDT customers in Metro Manila and also those in Rizal province, San Pedro, Laguna and Bacoor in Cavite.

NTC’s memorandum order issued last year requires 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.”

Deadline of the migration has been moved from March to October to give banks and credit card companies enough time to make the necessary adjustments.

“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,” PLDT and Smart public affairs head Ramon Isberto said.

“We would like to encourage our subscribers in Metro Manila and other ‘02’ areas to start disseminating their updated numbers to their callers and updating their promotional materials such as business cards, websites and social media,” he said.

PLDT said the migration process will start early morning of Oct. 6 – from 12:01 a.m. until 5 a.m.

The company said 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 digits landline number.

Those outside the Philippines, meanwhile, will have to do the following: dial 00 + country code (63) + area code (2) + 8 digits landline number.

The NTC has assigned a public telecommunications entity identifier for telecom operators as an additional prefix in expanding from seven-digit to eight-digit landline number.

Meanwhile, the assigned PTE identifier for Globe and its subsidiary Innove is 7.