Apartment buzzer app for Vancouver
Yes, Enterkey works in Vancouver. Any entry panel that places a real phone call to your suite can hand that call to Enterkey instead, with no wiring touched and nothing bolted beside the door. Numbers here run across 604, 778, 236 and 257, and Enterkey provisions one close to the line already in your pocket, so the digits on your directory entry read as ordinary.
- Area codes in this region
- 604, 778, 236, 257
- Delivery services
- Uber Eats, DoorDash, SkipTheDishes, Instacart
Vancouver facts we checked
- 166,490 of Vancouver's 305,335 private households rent rather than own, a 54.5 percent renter share. Source: Statistics Canada, 2021 Census Profile, City of Vancouver, 2021
- The city's apartment stock splits almost evenly by height: 94,815 dwellings, 31.1 percent, sit in buildings of five or more storeys, and 95,120, 31.2 percent, in buildings under five. Source: Statistics Canada, 2021 Census Profile, City of Vancouver, 2021
- Between 1 September and 7 December 2022, 146 package thefts were reported to the Vancouver Police Department, with close to half of them falling in November alone. Source: Vancouver Police Department news release, December 2022
- The 257 overlay went into service across British Columbia on 24 May 2025, making it the fourth code a local line here can carry. Source: CBC News, B.C. is getting a new area code this weekend, 2025
- The Enterphone entry system was developed by BC Tel, the provincial telephone utility, which brought Enterphone manufacturing in house in 1984; the business later operated from Burnaby as Viscount Communication and Control Systems. Source: Viscount Systems Inc., SEC Form 10-K, 2013
- Identiv completed its purchase of the Enterphone MESH product line from Viscount Systems on 3 January 2019, so Enterphone is an Identiv brand. Source: Identiv press release issued through GlobeNewswire, January 2019
Where did the Enterphone brand actually come from?
From here. Enterphone was developed by BC Tel, the provincial telephone utility, which took over manufacturing it in house during 1984, and the business later operated out of Burnaby under the name Viscount Communication and Control Systems. That is a documented local origin, which is a different thing from a count of how many Vancouver lobbies run one today. Enterkey does not have that count and will not guess at it.
Ownership has since moved on: Identiv bought the Enterphone MESH line from Viscount in January 2019. That matters mainly so you do not go hunting for support at the wrong company. The Enterphone compatibility page covers the part that actually decides things, which is whether the unit in your lobby places an outside call.
Whatever badge is on your panel, Enterkey never promises a named model works. The apartment buzzer guide shows the single test that settles it, and the call box page deals with gate pedestals.
What number does a Vancouver account end up with?
604 has covered the coast since 1947, 778 was laid over it in 2001, 236 arrived in 2013 and 257 went into service on 24 May 2025, so a legitimate local phone can carry any of the four today.
Enterkey looks for a line near the one on your handset. Someone dialling from a 604 phone tends to be matched with 604, 778, 236 or 257 rather than something imported from across the country, which keeps your directory entry from standing out to anyone reading it at the door.
One account covers one building, so the number and the directory entry stay paired to each other and there is never ambiguity about which panel is calling.
Does package theft here change how you use the buzzer?
The police counted 146 reported package thefts in just over three months of late 2022, with almost half of those landing in November. Reported figures are a floor rather than a ceiling, since plenty of parcels quietly go unreported.
A buzzer app does not stand guard over a box. What it removes is the reason parcels end up somewhere they should not be. Uber Eats, DoorDash, SkipTheDishes and Instacart couriers each wait a matter of seconds at a panel, and an unanswered press turns into a parcel left in a shared entryway or a slip taped to the glass.
Picking up the call, or arming a timed key across the delivery window, gets the courier inside the building where the parcel was always meant to finish its trip.
Frequently asked questions
Is a 778 or 236 line worse than a 604 one?
Not in any way that reaches your door. 604, 778, 236 and the 257 overlay added in 2025 are all British Columbia codes in active service, and the panel dials whichever one sits on your entry without knowing the difference.
The reason Enterkey matches locally at all is human rather than technical: a familiar looking number is easier for a building manager to accept onto a directory.
Does my strata council need to sign off on it?
That is your building's call to make, not something Enterkey can rule on. What is worth knowing before you ask is the size of it: no hardware arrives, nothing is rewired, and no other resident's entry is touched.
Ask your property manager or building manager to point your unit's directory entry at your Enterkey number. They will know whether the strata expects to hear about it first.
I live in a four storey walk up. Is that too small for this?
Size has nothing to do with it, and in this city it would rule out a lot of people: roughly 31 percent of dwellings here are in buildings under five storeys, almost exactly the share in buildings of five or more.
The only question is whether pressing your suite places a call to an outside line. A compact panel with eight buttons does that just as readily as a searchable directory in a tower lobby.
Will this stop somebody stealing my package?
No, and it would be dishonest to say otherwise. Enterkey answers a phone call from an entry panel. It cannot watch a hallway or lock a parcel away.
What it does is get the courier through the entrance in the first place, so the parcel goes somewhere inside the building rather than being left where anyone passing can reach it.
Enterkey gives you a local Vancouver number your buzzer dials, then answers it for you. New members get the first month free.