Phone Calls in Strange Places
There are a lot of ways that technology has made doing international business easier and faster, especially in the area of communication.
Take phone calls as an example.
In the pre-cell-phone days (or BC for short - Before Cell) or in the days when Americans didn’t have tri-band cell phones and couldn’t use their phones outside of the US, making phone calls while travelling in foreign countries was not that easy. Yesterday, I spoke about international dialing and how different countries have different codes (called IDD Prefixes) to get an international line. But what about when you get to the country and need to call up your host? How do you do that?
Well, I say “Thank goodness for cell phone address books and the plus sign (+)!” If you have phone numbers entered into your cell phone starting with the plus sign, followed by the country code, city (area) code and then the local number, you are all set! Telco providers in many countries nowadays correctly interpret this syntax and place the call, whether it is an international, national or local call.
If you don’t have your cell phone address book complete with the plus sign and country code, here is some important information for making national and local calls.
Typical US phone numbers look like this:
1-212-xxx-xxxx
If you are anywhere in the US and use this syntax to dial the number, you should get through. (In the old days, if you were calling from inside area code 212 to another 212 number, you would have gotten a message not to use the area code.)
Typical non-US numbers look like this:
+49 69 xxxxxxxx
Some people might give you this number a different way:
+49 (0)69 xxxxxxxx
where the (0) represents the NDD Prefix (National Direct Dialing). Similar to the IDD Prefix, every country has an NDD Prefix to indicate that you are placing a national call to someone in another city (area) code.
In the US, the Country Code and the NDD are the same: 1.
The international standard (although not adopted by all countries) uses 00 as the IDD and 0 as the NDD.
The person who sent you their phone number as
+49 (0)69 xxxxxxxx
was essentially saying “If you are calling me from inside of Germany, drop the +49 country code but add 0 as the NDD.
So far, so good. Unfortunately, a lot of countries don’t follow these international standards. In some countries, notably Italy, the 0 needs to be included whether you are calling from outside the country (international) or from within the country (national).
An example of an Italian phone number is thus:
+39 06 xxxxxxxx
Cell phone numbers in Italy are different. They do not use a 0 and they all start with 3. Example:
+39 312 xxxxxxx
Effectively, Italy has stopped using a NDD (they used to have one) and has built it into the number.
In other countries, like Norway, there is essentially also no NDD. Examples:
+47 22xx xxxx
(outside Norway)
22xx xxxx
(within Norway)
If you are still reading this, you are a brave soul. If you skipped to the bottom to read the punch line, go to www.countrycallingcodes.com. They can handle all of these exceptions and more. Or just correct the address book in your cell phone and let your cell phone do the work.
Tags: address_book, national-phone-calls, NDD-PrefixRelated Stories
POSTED IN: Resources and Links, Technology
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