Saudi Arabia’s Communication and Information Technology Commission (CITC) has implemented the second phase of changing area codes for five provinces to increase the telephone numbers by a minimum of 500 million, a report said.

The new area codes have added ‘1’ after the first ‘0’, causing  the area code for Makkah to change to 012, Madinah to 014, Eastern Province to 013, Qassim to 016 and the Southern region to 017, said the report in Arab News.

CITC will keep the old codes active along with the new ones for four weeks starting Sunday, the report said.

In the first phase of the implementation of the new area codes the code for the Riyadh province was changed to 011 from the previous 01 in May, according to the report.