France from Paris, however, the trunk prefix 16 had to be dialed before the eight-digit number, followed by the area code for Paris 1 and the eight-digit number. On 18 October 1996, this changed to the present "ten-digit" system (including the default one-digit leading trunk code 0), in which each call is dialed using all ten digits, this national scheme being also extended to cover Overseas France in a single area. Area codes were abolished, and since then France has had a closed numbering plan, where all local or national calls require dialing the leading trunk code. Following liberalisation in 1998, subscribers (first deployed on land lines and rapidly extended to all mobile networks) could access different carriers by replacing the leading trunk code 0 (omitted from numbers when called from outside France) with another carrier selection code (one digit from 2 to 9, or four digits 16xx). For example, Cegetel required subscribers to dial 7; e.g., Paris 71 xx xx xx xx, instead of 01 xx xx xx xx. Similarly, the international access code using Cegetel would be 70 instead of 00 by replacing the first 0. Since then, the carrier selection code still exists, but carrier preselection (and number portability) is offered by default on all subscriber lines, and the one-digit carrier selection is rarely used. As well, several important national operators merged, and the four-digit carrier selection only persists for subscribers of various international service providers (most of them for mobile telephony, but these carrier selection prefixes are often dialed internally by a terminal device and callers don't need to care about it, unless they want to select carriers for different services). Additionally, call fees no longer depend on distance throughout the French numbering plan, so carrier selection remains used only for international calls. The 09 prefix was introduced for non-geographic numbers and special services in September 2006 and older numbers such as 08 7x xx xx xx (used for VoIP in Internet boxes) were replaced by 09 5x xx xx xx (telephone service offered by Internet service provider Free, later followed by other French ISPs). The national information service 12 was closed in 2005 which lead to the creation of many new information services 118 xxx. They cost €3 per call plus €3 per minute. Defunct prefixes Changed in 1996: 16 - Long distance prefix - Changed to: 0 19 - International prefix - Changed to: