International phone number formats?
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Can you explain to me the logic behind adding a 1 as the second digit in most phone codes about eight or ten years ago (I don't remember exactly when it was). If I try to dial my home number with a code of 0884 I get a recorded BT woman telling me to redial with 01884. Now as the number that follows the area code hasn't changed, what advantage has adding that extra 1 in there done? Similarly, all the 5 digit phone numbers (after the code) in Exeter where pre-fixed with a 2 to make them 6 digits about 1998. If I try to dial my old office number with the old 5 digit number I get the same recorded BT woman telling me to redial with a 2 prefix on the number... I just don't see how they have created more numbers (their reasoning at the time) by adding in what is essentially a silent number. :confused:
David Wulff The Royal Woofle Museum
Everybody is entitled to my opinion
David Wulff wrote: I just don't see how they have created more numbers (their reasoning at the time) by adding in what is essentially a silent number. It is a silent number now, but in the future it will be used. The 0884 number is in the range for low-cost/free phone numbers and I am guessing that there are no companies yet offering services with phone numbers starting 0884. The recorded message will probably stay until some service provider takes the number grouping. As I recall: 01-06: Geographic numbers 07: Mobile devices 08: Low cost/free numbers 09: Premium rate numbers 03-06 are not currently in use. 06: In many EU countries is used for mobile devices so 07 may be reorganised to 06 if EU harmonisation is required. (Already you can dial 112 for emergency services, which is the pan EU number for emergency services)
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David Wulff wrote: I just don't see how they have created more numbers (their reasoning at the time) by adding in what is essentially a silent number. It is a silent number now, but in the future it will be used. The 0884 number is in the range for low-cost/free phone numbers and I am guessing that there are no companies yet offering services with phone numbers starting 0884. The recorded message will probably stay until some service provider takes the number grouping. As I recall: 01-06: Geographic numbers 07: Mobile devices 08: Low cost/free numbers 09: Premium rate numbers 03-06 are not currently in use. 06: In many EU countries is used for mobile devices so 07 may be reorganised to 06 if EU harmonisation is required. (Already you can dial 112 for emergency services, which is the pan EU number for emergency services)
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Colin Angus Mackay wrote: It is a silent number now, but in the future it will be used. Ok, so assuming in twenty years time when everybody has forgotten the old numbers they start reusing them again... why not just give the new numbers the extra digits? Trying to make all regional numbers use the same format would have been a good enough reason to change, but I don't see that happening as a result? O884 could become a low cost number - OK I can see the logic there - but what about the 95% of codes that didn't fall into that category? Exeter used to be 0392 for example. Colin Angus Mackay wrote: so 07 may be reorganised to 06 if EU harmonisation is required. Please no no no no no... Please. I have a hard enough time remembering all these mobile numbers as it is, without having to forget them all and start again! :rolleyes:
David Wulff The Royal Woofle Museum
Everybody is entitled to my opinion
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Nothing like the good old North American format :) (123) 555-1234 Couldn't be easier (for me, anyway!)
Heh... growing up, nearly everyone i knew was on the same exchange, so i dialed 4-digits. As i met people in surrounding towns, i got in the habit of dialing seven digits. Then for a while, my contacts were split between a local phone company, and another that was accessed through a long-distance carrier, so i dialed some 7-digits and some 10. Now i'm with a cell company that doesn't bill me differently for local vs. long-distance, so i dial everything 10-digits. Apparently, New York landlines must soon be dialed with 11-digit codes soon ("1" + 10-digit number).
"The time has come," the Walrus said, "To talk of many things..." -
Anyone knows where I can find all the international phone number formats? Googling didn't help... This gave me a little help, but it's incomplete: http://www.csoft.co.uk/phone_numbers/[^] ie: North America: (123) 555-1234 France: 00 00 00 00 00 Thanks! Carl
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That's a nice list, but not really what I'm after. I'm looking for the phone number format of every country. As I said earlier, I'm writing a class that will return a formatted phone number based on the country and digits. Example: FormatPhone("1235551234", Countries.UnitedStates) --> (123) 555-1234 FormatPhone("1235551234", Countries.France) --> 12 35 55 12 34 It will also support phone extensions. I already have the format for France, USA and Canada but I'm looking to extend it to support all countries in the world.
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That's a nice list, but not really what I'm after. I'm looking for the phone number format of every country. As I said earlier, I'm writing a class that will return a formatted phone number based on the country and digits. Example: FormatPhone("1235551234", Countries.UnitedStates) --> (123) 555-1234 FormatPhone("1235551234", Countries.France) --> 12 35 55 12 34 It will also support phone extensions. I already have the format for France, USA and Canada but I'm looking to extend it to support all countries in the world.
C a r l wrote: I'm looking for the phone number format of every country What country are you not finding?
"Opinions are neither right nor wrong. I cannot change your opinion. I can, however, change what influences your opinion." - David Crow
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C a r l wrote: I'm looking for the phone number format of every country What country are you not finding?
"Opinions are neither right nor wrong. I cannot change your opinion. I can, however, change what influences your opinion." - David Crow
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Maybe I didn't see... but those are only the country codes right? I'm looking for the "format", not the country code. I couldn't find any format information (as I said, maybe it's just me!)
You are not going to find a format because one does not exist. For example, I write my phone number in any of the following formats: 1-918-555-1212 1 (918) 555-1212 (918) 555-1212 1.918.555.1212 918.555.1212 1 (918) 555.1212 1 (918) 555 1212 19185551212 Any one of them is correct, and probably depends on what mood I'm in as to which is used.
"Opinions are neither right nor wrong. I cannot change your opinion. I can, however, change what influences your opinion." - David Crow
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You are not going to find a format because one does not exist. For example, I write my phone number in any of the following formats: 1-918-555-1212 1 (918) 555-1212 (918) 555-1212 1.918.555.1212 918.555.1212 1 (918) 555.1212 1 (918) 555 1212 19185551212 Any one of them is correct, and probably depends on what mood I'm in as to which is used.
"Opinions are neither right nor wrong. I cannot change your opinion. I can, however, change what influences your opinion." - David Crow
Well... everyone knows that in the US, numbers are grouped as follow: xxx xxx xxxx That's pretty much what I want. There -is- a certain standard in America, although it might not be precise. 123-123-1234 is considered as correct, but 123123 1234 is not.
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Well... everyone knows that in the US, numbers are grouped as follow: xxx xxx xxxx That's pretty much what I want. There -is- a certain standard in America, although it might not be precise. 123-123-1234 is considered as correct, but 123123 1234 is not.
No Carl, there *isn't* a standard in how to format telephone numbers. As I said earlier, we put a lot of time and research into this very issue about a year ago and the definitive answer was let the user pick their own format. I've seen here in Canada any one of the following used in print: 555.555.5555 <-starting to see this *very* often all over the place, IP style notation. (555) 555-5555 (555) 555 5555 555 555-5555 555-5555 (area code 555) 1-800-pizza55 etc etc, it's just endless. There *are* standards for mailing address put out by each country's postal authority, there are standards for iso country codes, there are standards for IP addresses, credit card numbers, social security / social insurance numbers, license plates etc. Phone number formatting is at best a personal convention. There will never be a *right* way to do it. No matter what you come up with, a sizable percentage of people will not like it, trust me on this one, we've been publishing business software for almost a decade now and people at large take this kind of thing pretty seriously and demand that it conform to their expectations even if their expectations are just plain wrong.
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No Carl, there *isn't* a standard in how to format telephone numbers. As I said earlier, we put a lot of time and research into this very issue about a year ago and the definitive answer was let the user pick their own format. I've seen here in Canada any one of the following used in print: 555.555.5555 <-starting to see this *very* often all over the place, IP style notation. (555) 555-5555 (555) 555 5555 555 555-5555 555-5555 (area code 555) 1-800-pizza55 etc etc, it's just endless. There *are* standards for mailing address put out by each country's postal authority, there are standards for iso country codes, there are standards for IP addresses, credit card numbers, social security / social insurance numbers, license plates etc. Phone number formatting is at best a personal convention. There will never be a *right* way to do it. No matter what you come up with, a sizable percentage of people will not like it, trust me on this one, we've been publishing business software for almost a decade now and people at large take this kind of thing pretty seriously and demand that it conform to their expectations even if their expectations are just plain wrong.
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Anyone knows where I can find all the international phone number formats? Googling didn't help... This gave me a little help, but it's incomplete: http://www.csoft.co.uk/phone_numbers/[^] ie: North America: (123) 555-1234 France: 00 00 00 00 00 Thanks! Carl
The standard for telephone numbers is ITU-T E.123 (02/01).
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The standard for telephone numbers is ITU-T E.123 (02/01).
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Well... everyone knows that in the US, numbers are grouped as follow: xxx xxx xxxx That's pretty much what I want. There -is- a certain standard in America, although it might not be precise. 123-123-1234 is considered as correct, but 123123 1234 is not.
C a r l wrote: Well... everyone knows that in the US, numbers are grouped as follow: xxx xxx xxxx No, not to everyone. C a r l wrote: There -is- a certain standard in America... You are confused about what a de facto standard is. How a phone number is displayed and how it is treated/handled by phone equipment are two different things. Your program should handle a phone number in any format. All superfluous characters should be removed when actually using the phone number for dialing purposes.
"Opinions are neither right nor wrong. I cannot change your opinion. I can, however, change what influences your opinion." - David Crow
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No Carl, there *isn't* a standard in how to format telephone numbers. As I said earlier, we put a lot of time and research into this very issue about a year ago and the definitive answer was let the user pick their own format. I've seen here in Canada any one of the following used in print: 555.555.5555 <-starting to see this *very* often all over the place, IP style notation. (555) 555-5555 (555) 555 5555 555 555-5555 555-5555 (area code 555) 1-800-pizza55 etc etc, it's just endless. There *are* standards for mailing address put out by each country's postal authority, there are standards for iso country codes, there are standards for IP addresses, credit card numbers, social security / social insurance numbers, license plates etc. Phone number formatting is at best a personal convention. There will never be a *right* way to do it. No matter what you come up with, a sizable percentage of people will not like it, trust me on this one, we've been publishing business software for almost a decade now and people at large take this kind of thing pretty seriously and demand that it conform to their expectations even if their expectations are just plain wrong.
John Cardinal wrote: As I said earlier, we put a lot of time and research into this very issue about a year ago and the definitive answer was let the user pick their own format. The same thing happened to me several years ago when I wanted to use a masked-edit control to force the phone numbers into a particular format. It went over like a lead balloon. With a dozen different developers in the group, we had a dozen different opinions! We ended up just making it a regular edit control.
"Opinions are neither right nor wrong. I cannot change your opinion. I can, however, change what influences your opinion." - David Crow
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Can you explain to me the logic behind adding a 1 as the second digit in most phone codes about eight or ten years ago (I don't remember exactly when it was). If I try to dial my home number with a code of 0884 I get a recorded BT woman telling me to redial with 01884. Now as the number that follows the area code hasn't changed, what advantage has adding that extra 1 in there done? Similarly, all the 5 digit phone numbers (after the code) in Exeter where pre-fixed with a 2 to make them 6 digits about 1998. If I try to dial my old office number with the old 5 digit number I get the same recorded BT woman telling me to redial with a 2 prefix on the number... I just don't see how they have created more numbers (their reasoning at the time) by adding in what is essentially a silent number. :confused:
David Wulff The Royal Woofle Museum
Everybody is entitled to my opinion
David Wulff wrote:
Can you explain to me the logic behind adding a 1 as the second digit in most phone codes about eight or ten years ago (I don't remember exactly when it was). If I try to dial my home number with a code of 0884 I get a recorded BT woman telling me to redial with 01884. Now as the number that follows the area code hasn't changed, what advantage has adding that extra 1 in there done? Similarly, all the 5 digit phone numbers (after the code) in Exeter were pre-fixed with a 2 to make them 6 digits about 1998. If I try to dial my old office number with the old 5 digit number I get the same recorded BT woman telling me to redial with a 2 prefix on the number... I just don't see how they have created more numbers (their reasoning at the time) by adding in what is essentially a silent number. Confused
If all UK 'geographical' area codes now begin with 01 then you have created *thousands* of unused codes from 02 to 09 that can be used for other services in the future. In the short term, all the random 0402 and 0973 area codes for mobile phones were moved to 07xxx codes. Additionally, all the freephone, lo-call, and national-rate stuff was moved to 08xx. Finally, all the Premium rate stuff was moved to 09xxx. That still left all of the 02 to 06 ranges unused. When London was in danger of running out of 0171 and 0181 seven-digit numbers the whole lot was moved to (020) and everyone's number changed from seven-digits to eight-digits. The old 0171 numbers became 7xxx xxxx. The old 0181 numbers became 8xxx xxxx. The area code for London is (020) and the whole of the 3xxx xxxx and 4xxx xxxx and 5xxx xxxx and 6xxx xxxx number ranges became available for use in the future. The 3xxx xxxx range has now started to be used in the last few years. The planning for this was all done in those BigNumber changes. Other areas of the country are using (023) and (024) and (028) and (029) area codes, and all of those have eight-digit local numbers too. When all your five-digit Exeter local numbers were prefixed with a 2 to make a six-digit local number many years ago, they opened up the range so that numbers like 3xxxxx and 4xxxxx and 5xxxxx and 6xxxxx and 7xxxxx and 8xxxxx became available for future use within your area code. By now, I expect that a lot of those *are* already in use. Most UK phone number formats are fairly simple: - (01x1) xxx xxxx - (011x) xxx xxxx - (01xxx) xxxxxx - (02x) xxxx xxxx - 07xxx xxxxxx - 08xx xxx xxxx