New to Canada? Your buzzer probably cannot reach your phone
A Toronto lobby panel dials out on a building phone line that is restricted to local calls, so it cannot reach an international number or a number from another province. Nothing rings and nothing looks broken from the building side. The fix is a Canadian number local to your building that rings the phone you already carry, so your own number does not change.
You arrived, you signed a lease, and the buzzer has never worked. Your building says the panel is fine, and as far as they can see it is. This is one of the most common experiences of arriving in Toronto and almost nobody explains it.
What a buzzer is here
Most Canadian apartment buildings have a panel in the lobby with a list of units. A visitor finds your unit and presses a code. The panel then places an ordinary phone call to one number the building has stored for your apartment.
You answer that call like any other call and press a digit to open the lobby door. There is no app, no video, and nothing installed in your apartment. The whole chain, step by step.
Why your number cannot be reached
The panel makes that call on a phone line the building pays for, and buildings restrict those lines to local calls. An entry panel that can dial any number in the world is an entry panel that will eventually dial one.
So a number from outside the local area is not blocked or rejected in a way anybody sees. The call simply does not complete. The same problem for people moving between provinces.
Your options
| Option | Your number changes | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| A local number that rings your existing phone | No | Works with the phone and plan you already have |
| Get a Canadian mobile number | Yes | Useful anyway, and everyone abroad has to be told the new one |
| Ask the building to allow long distance | No | They will almost certainly decline, and reasonably |
| A home phone line in the apartment | No | A monthly bill for a phone that only opens a door |
Most newcomers end up with a Canadian mobile eventually. Until then, the first row is the one that makes the buzzer work today.
If you are sharing the apartment
Shared apartments are common and the panel still holds one number. If several of you arrived with international numbers, none of them can be stored and one Canadian number has to serve everybody.
BuzzMeBro gives the apartment a number that is local to your building and rings up to 4 phones at once, for $11.99 a month for the apartment rather than per person. Each person confirms their own number by text first. What that looks like in a student house.
Questions people ask
Do I need a Canadian phone number to live here?
Not for the apartment itself, but a great deal in Canada assumes one, including the buzzer. What the buzzer specifically needs is a number that is local to your building, which can point at the phone you already use.
Will the building help me sort this out?
They will change the number they store for your unit, which is the part they control. They cannot make the panel line reach an international number, so that part is not something to keep asking for.
Can I use a messaging app instead?
Not for the buzzer. The panel places a real phone call to a real phone number, so an app that works over the internet is not something it can dial.
How do I know if this is my problem?
Press your own unit code at the lobby panel. If absolutely nothing happens on your phone, and calls from other people in Canada reach you normally, this is almost certainly it.
Does my own number have to change?
No. BuzzMeBro adds a separate local number for the apartment and your phone rings when that number is called, so you keep the number your family and friends already have.