What qualifies as long distance regarding calls within the GTA?

Question

Not to be too explicit, but I live within the Markham region of the GTA. I have Bell as my primary home phone carrier. When placing calls out to Richmond Hill, Mississauga, Brampton, Vaughan, Maple and Woodbridge, Bell wouldn't let me place these calls unless I added a 1 to the beginning of the telephone number (long distance). However, these places are only a few kilometres away, especially so for Richmond Hill.

What qualifies as long distance according to Bell? How much will it cost per minute? Why do they charge long distance even if these communities aren't that far?

Answer 1

i agree all these places are relatively close to you and should not be long distance however good ol ma bell still thinks she has a edge on the phone market we fooled her and switched to cogeco with zero long distance charges anywhere in canada and the states any day any time we even dropped sympatico and went with cogeco

Answer 2

call your local provider and ask them what you calling radius is, i live in chicago but not all 312 calls are witinin my calling range

Answer 3

each exchange (the three numbers in the middle) determine your free calling area.  They also base it on population within your calling area.  Now you are long distance to me in Brampton but to Toronto you are local.  What about Pickering?

Basically the east side is local and the west is long distance.  I beleive they made Toronto local for you which before the changes was not (not completely).  So when the changes were made to local/long calling areas they made access to more places but may have cut off some others.  Unfortunately they do have to draw a line somewhere.  I had a customer up north whose township office was long distance to them even though it was only a couple of miles away due to the telephone system setup.