Many Canadians decided to call home last week when a technology glitch temporarily converted thousands of payphones in Ontario and Quebec into a toll-free service.

For six days people who punched in a sequence of numbers -- 10-10-620 –- into any of Bell Canada's Millennium pay phones were suddenly able to call anyone, anywhere, with no charge.

A hacker from Pakistan who lives in Toronto said in an e-mail that he discovered the glitch last Monday, when he was "experimenting" with Telehop's access code.

"I wondered why the payphones in front of my stores suddenly became so popular, with 20 to 30 people waiting to make calls," said Anil Patel, owner of three newsstands in Mississauga, a Toronto suburb.

Atel Rajesh, an employee in a spice store in Toronto's Kensington market, said that local Indian websites and Internet radio stations were also announcing the glitch and telling people how to exploit it.