Phone Number Prefix Normative

The Telephone Prefix Norm (in Spanish: Norma de Prefijos Telefónicos) is a law that came into force on August 13 2025 in Chile. The purpose of this law is to make easy to identify phone numbers that belong to commercial numbers.

What does this norm do

All phone numbers that belong to telecommunications companies that do commercial or massive phone calls are forced to add a prefix to their numbers in order to be recognizable:

• The prefix 600 in a number is used to identify numbers that belong to entities that do phone calls with publicitary purposes that are desired, requested, expected by the user or accepted by service contracts.
• The prefix 809 in a number is used to identify numbers that belong to entities that do phone calls with publicitary purposes that are undesired by the user.

This norm also allows to identify better what publicitary calls are scams, by identifying if the number that called has or doesn't have these prefixes.

Companies that do not comply or that use a different prefix are fined with an approximate amount between $406 and $405,784.

Consequences

According to a survey of CADEM, a national research company, 80% of Chileans can recognize commercial cals from the number prefixes, and 79% of them do not answer these calls after the implementation of the law.