Apple iPhone

In order to judiciously distribute international telephone numbers among various lands and districts of the world and to cell phone operators the telephone numbering plan is applied. There’s still a difference between international dialing codes and numbering plans. And the closed numbering plan, it is applied in places like North America and Australia so that there phone numbers are dialed in combination with special length region codes.

An open numbering plan means that phone numbers and dialing codes can be different depending on the land and region they belong to. The open plan works in lots of countries these days. Dialing the telephone numbers fixed by this system you must be sure to anyway use the figures of the subscriber’s number, remembering that the digits of the dialling code don’t need to be always used.
That appears to be really much difficult to unify the system. As the International Telecommunication Union or ITU attempted to introduce general rules of numbering plans and international dialling codes, they still stay various in various countries. E.g. double zero was meant to work as an international code of access. Some countries have agreed to the offer and entered the code, still as changing it was not obligatory for the state members in a number of them like the USA the dialing codes stayed as they were. Mixed up? Give a try to brand reverse phone number!

In correspondence with the international numbering plan country dialling codes are defined. Area code stands for a nation or a set of nations. In order to control the codes for international calls there is the E.164 system. It defines the general extension of the dialled number. Anyway in any area the phone numbers are fixed differently by the country’s rules. Regional country codes then can be with:

- The size commonly fixed by country standards as it is in United States (three digits) or in Australia and New Zealand (1 figure).
- The length that is not fixed so that it is different from one to 2 in Syria, from one to 5 on japanese isles or from 2 up to 5 in Germany or otherwise.

- Peculiar norms supposing that the subscriber’s number has the area dialing code in its scheme, like in Norway and Spain. This way the “closed” numbering plan is used. It happens that trunk calling codes are used in the nations like Belgium, Poland and the Netherlands, african countries or others. And generally for this purpose zero is used.

The dialling code of the region mainly lets charge the people for calls rightly. The rate for calls on the territory of the area dialling code usually goes lower than for the calls to the numbers with some other area calling code. The calls to the numbers with adjacent area dialing codes are also charged at lower price.

It’s often quite vice versa in the USA as the prices for local calls are set by the state’s representatives. And it appears to be so that state’s prices are higher than the prices for trunk calls defined by competition.

As sometimes in United States the interval between the callers of one large location may be too big, the calls are priced depending on the interval though the area dialling code is similar.

The prices are generally determined for distance segments which are around 6, six-twelve miles and etc. Normally they are set by valuation centers. However, it became different with the lack of control of local calling services.

It’s now becoming popular among the people to turn to a so-called “all-you-can-eat” plan (an assigned rate of about $30 monthly as fixed for May 2008 allowing to connect with any place of States).

There may be special calling codes. They are used usually for cell phone systems in the regions where they are paid by the user or for free, premium rates.

There also may be different particular variants. For example in areas like Egypt calling code evaluate nothing as the prices remain the same for the whole territory and in the UK the area dialling code is made of 2 segments every one with its cost.

Filed under: Calling Codes