What is a phone numbering plan? It is actually a plan of allotting intenational phone numbers between cell providers of the world and the objects of various countries, territories and districts. It would be anyway not right to compare dial plans with numbering plans. In areas like Australia or Canada there exists a closed numbering plan which supposes appointed length territory codes and telephone numbers.

An open numbering plan means that numbers and area dialling codes can differ according to the country and region they belong to. The open plan is used in lots of countries these days. Dialling the phone numbers fixed by this plan you have to be sure to always dial the digits of the subscriber’s number, remembering that the digits of the dialling code mustn’t be in any case used.
In spite of the suggestions of the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) to carry out the norms of numbering plans and international dialing codes they anyway are various in different places. At first the Union suggested the different countries to apply double zero as the international access code. Several nations have answered yes to the offer and entered the combination, still as assigning it was not binding for the state members in a number of them like United States the dialing codes stayed as they used to be. Mixed up? Try reverse phone number!

Country codes (the codes that denote nations or group of nations) are assigned by the international numbering plan. The E.164 standard serves exactly for regulating area dialing codes at the international level. It defines the common length of a full international phone number. The numbers in each area are anyway conditioned by its own network. Regional country codes then may have:

- An assigned extension, including e.g. 1 digit in Australia or 3 in Canada and the USA.
- The length that is not assigned so that it differs from one to two in Syria or Peru, from 1 to 5 on japanese isles or from 2 up to five in Germany or more.

- The dialling code included into the number itself. It’s spread in several areas like Norway. In this case the closed numbering plan is applied. Concerning some of the regions, they apply zero as an interurban dialing code. It’s popular in countries like Belgium, Poland and the Netherlands, South Africa or others.

The calling code normally helps to measure the rate of the call. Generally calling on the telephone numbers within local dialling code is pleasantly less expensive than making calls on the telephone numbers with some other area dialling code.

But it is usually otherwise in the USA as there the prices for local phone calls are regulated by the state norms and the rates frequently happen to be bigger than for inter-city calls.

Still there are some locations in the USA where area calling codes serve for a truly big area. In such conditions various costs are used depending on the interval between the subscribers.

The costs are usually defined for area sections which are about 6, 12 miles and so on. Usually they are determined by valuation centers. However, as the regulation of local call services was finished that all went the other way.

Today it’s going wide spread among the customers to turn to a so-called “all-you-can-eat” plan (a fixed rate of about 30 dollars monthly as actual for May 2008 letting call to any city of States).
There can be particular area calling codes. They are used usually for cell phone systems in the lands where they are paid by the caller or for free, premium rates.

There as well can be different particular variants. E.g. in countries like Egypt dialing codes define nothing because the prices are the same for all the territory and in Great Britain the area dialing code is complete of two pieces every one with its rate.

This entry was posted on Friday, July 25th, 2008 at 12:38 pm and is filed under Future of Telecom. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.