Telephony Information

This page is intended to provide general information about the telephone system, with special sections providing:

• An index to the time lunes around of the world, indexed by telephone Country Code,
• A similar index, by City Code, for Country Code 1.

• No representation as to Political Status is to be inferred from any listing hereunder.
• Other data herewith is as correct as I have information of, have reconciled conflicting sources, and have edited it.
• Depending on criticality of your application, verification against alternate sources is recommended. The references listed in the links at the bottom of this page may suffice for such.
• Clear and verifiable advice on amendments (to complete the tables, to correct errors and omissions, to remove inconsistencies, to eliminate uncertainties, to improve utility, to improve conformity to existing standards, to expand supplemental tables, etc.) will be appreciated. Send such information to Robert@WendyGamble.com.

INDEX

• Notes on ITU Standard Grammar for Representing Telephone Numbers;
• Notes on Calling to Seagoing Vessels;
• Notes & Charts to aid in the interpretation of the two main tables;
• Table of World Country Codes, with notation of the regions to which they are assigned; Listing of time Lunes observed in the regions; Long-Distance dialling prefixes for the regions;
• Table of North American City Codes (colloquially known as Area Codes), with notation of the regions to which they are assigned and the Time Lunes observed in the regions;
• Toll-Free Calling information;
• Trivia related to telephony;
• Thanks to those who have helped in the evolution of this compilation;
• Links to other pages which may help to corroborate this information, and may provide it in a format more useful to you.

  The follwing is a rough translation of information gleaned, based on ITU Standard E.163 et. all. ITU E.163 has been withdrawn, with portions of it being incorporated into “The international public telecommunication numbering plan; E.164.” ITU-T is the International Telecommunications Union-Telecommunication Standardisation Sector (formerly CCITT (Comit Consultaif International Télégraphique et Téléphonique (International Telegraph and Telephone Consultative Committee))).

Standard Grammar for Representing Telephone Numbers {Maximum 15 digits}:

• Plus Sign   Country Code   Group Identification Code   Space   National Specific Number.
  1. Plus Sign =   “+”,
  2. Country Code (CC) =   per ITU-TSB assignment {1 to 3 digits},
  3. Group Identification Code (GIC) =   per ITU-TSB assignment {0 or 1 digit},
  4. Space =   “ ”,
  5. National Specific Number (NSN)   which is usually broken up as:
     1. City Code,
     2. Space,
     3. Number Within City,   which may also contain spaces for readability.

  As explained in the British Telecom telephone book, the ‘+’ sign is a place marker for the international-call dialling prefix, something which is not uniform form country to country.

Where the Country Code is 870, the call will be routed through an Inmarsat satellite.

Country Codes 875, 876, and 877 are reserved, perhaps for future mobile maritime satellite services.

Based on the above, new, information: The following gleaned circa 1995-2007 is to some extent obsolete:

NOTES For Interpretation and Use of the Global Table of Country Codes

LEGEND for Notes re Observance of Daylight Saving Time (DST):

• N & S Indicate a Country’s Location with respect to the Equator (North or South), (and thus indicates when is the summer during which they would observe DST);
  n & s are used where only part of the country observes DST;
• Where used in parenthesis, N, S, E, W, & C designate the cardinal points of the compass and ‘central’, serving to identify the portion(s) that observe(s) DST;
• 1 = First, E = Early, L = Last, or Late; S = Sunday.

Further Notes re Observance of Daylight Saving Time:

  The DST Shift is 1 Hour East, except as specifically noted.
  These data are known to be incomplete, and are possibly obsolete, or otherwise flawed.

Strip Codes:

  Where a telephone number is not provided to ITU standard (where it was not intended for international use, or was provided by someone inconversant with the system) it may include a long-distance dialling prefix − either the intranational prefix, or the international prefix − for use in the country of concern. The “Strip Code” column identifies these errant prefixes (Intranational first, an ampersand separator, and then the International). When used in conjunction with the Length of NSN, this should help you avoid and repair errant numbers.
  These data are, admittedly, woefully incomplete. A good guess is that if the number does not work the first time, any ‘zero’ or ‘one’ positioned as if were a leading character of the City Code is an intranational prefix. Consult other sources, such as .

Length of NSN:

  The length of the National Specific Number (as the sum of two lengths, City Code length & Number Within City length) is provided as a check that one has all the pieces of the telephone number. For some locations these are ranges; Information here is more from available examples than rigorous specifications.

• The DST data are probably incomplete, and possibly flawed.
• The Abbreviation column provides the official abbreviations preferred by the postal authority in the country of note.

LEGEND:

• X   = Inclusion (x   = minor inclusion);
  Upper and lower case are used similarly in other notations;
• N, S, E, W:   = cardinal directions;
• C, I, O, G: C   = Central or Continental, I = Inner or Island, O = Outer, G = Greater (i.e. Inner and Outer, together);

LUNE versus ZONE:

  Properly speaking, zones are bounded by lines of latitude (e.g., Southern Temperate Zone). The shape bounded by two lines of longitude is properly called a lune. Viewed on a globe, zones are ring-shaped, with parallel edges. Lunes, when observed on a globe, have two straight edges, are their widest at the equator, and (when less than 180° apart) end in points at the poles. Thus, a time ‘zone’ could be ‘equatorial’, where daylight savings is not observed; ‘Northern,’ or ‘Southern,’ where it is; or Polar, where local time is typically set, at the convenience of explorers and researchers in temporary residence, to the time of their home base.

  See also the section, above, for notes on interpretation of the table.

  This section is intended to offer a comprehensive cross-reference for:

• Country Code,
• Country Name,
• Time lune;
    With additional information on:
  • Observance of Daylight Saving time,
  • Length of telephone number,
  • Dialling prefixes for intra-and extra-country calling.

  Similar information, seemingly officially maintained, is available on the following pages:

• http://www.fonefinder.net, where one can search by number, or country.
• http://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/dialing.html where one may resolve international dialing prefixes.
• http://www.thelist.com/countrycode.html which shows Countries sorted alphabetically, with associated country-codes.

  For an article on the organization of ‘world zones’ see: http://www.wtng.info/wtng-hst.html

  This segment is incomplete, and under construction.
  To change the sorting, the information could be copied, and pasted into an appropriate utility on your computer.

  See also the section, above, for notes on interpretation of the table.

  This section is intended to offer a comprehensive cross-reference for North American telephone exchanges:

• Area code (known outside North America as City Codes),
• Region covered,
• Time lune, with notes where observance of Daylight Saving time is inconsistent with the remainder of the region.

  Similar information, seemingly officially maintained, is available on the following pages:

• http://www.fonefinder.net, where one can search by number, or city.
• http://www.nanpa.com/, a site from which differently formatted searches may be performed.
• http://www.lincmad.com, another site which seems dedicated to current information, plus trivia, plus a map of areacodes.

  To change the sorting of the following table, the information could be copied, and pasted into an appropriate utility on your computer.
  Note: Some of the area codes numbers listed in this section are reserved, but not yet issued.

  This section is intended to provide information on toll-free dialling prefixes, and related items.

  At 1996-06-28 I heard that, ‘toll free’ (Diallee-Pay) numbers working from more than one country were not available. However the status was given as ‘Not yet available; Availability pending.’

Country Code 1:

  Toll-free calling is done on what is known as WATS (Wide Area Telephone Service) lines. These come in two varieties; IN-WATS, and OUT-WATS.

  City Codes 800, 866, 877, 888 and 900 designate WATS line numbers.

  A valid WATS line number may not work from a particular location because:

• Calls can not be placed to an Out-WATS (900) line.
• An In-WATS line may be set up to accept calls only from specific regions, such as one City Code area (but perhaps not the local calling area of a regularly formatted number); or just the neighbouring City Code areas; or both of those; or the local province/state/…; or the country.

Country Code 44:

  City Codes 500 and 800 may be toll-free.

  Pure and Useful Trivia, and Other Notes, Relevant to the History of the North American System:

  As with many other system which change over time, the constraints of history have directed the evolution of the telephone system.

  In the early assignment, dialing ‘Zero’ would summon the operator; and so ‘Zero’ was un-available as a first digit for any other telephonenumber. Also, ‘One’ may have been set aside by some long-seeing sage for use as a prefix in calling long-distance, although DDD (direct distance dialing) was a development to come after the days when every call outside the range of the local party-line was placed through an operator.

  In their early days of assignment in North America, area codes and exchanges were each three digits long; and by way of distinction, the second digit was significant:

• ‘Zero’ indicated an area-code serving the entirety of a province, state, or territory;
• ‘One’ indicated two, or more, area-codes served the province or territory invovled;
• Any other digit, indicated not an area-code but an exchange;

There have also been other rules and practices governing the issuance of area-codes, some of which still stand:

• Area-codes whose second and third digits were the same, were reserved for special services;
• Area-codes whose second and third digits are both ‘1,’ are reserved for service codes;
• Area-codes with the middle digit ‘9’ are being held in reserve for when the current 10-[ignoring country-code]-digit format is expanded;
• Area-codes that start ‘37×’ or ‘96×’ are reserved for as-yet undetermined use.

  When telephony was new, much of the USA population was on the East coast. With pulse-dialing, it took much longer to dial ‘9’ than ‘2’. Hence ‘long-pull’ area-codes such as ‘916’, ‘902’, ‘816’, and ‘803’ were assigned to the West; and the even longer-pull numbers (909, etc.) were left un-assigned. ‘Short-pull’ numbers, such as ‘212’ (New York) were assigned to the East. Even for local calling, ‘2’ was often the first digit (of the five, or fewer digits) one had to dial.

  To aid in the memorizing, and communication, of telephone-exchange numbers (the first two digits of which were not needed for local calls in many places), letters were assigned to the digits. Not ‘1’ & ‘0’, since they were used in area-codes, not exchanges; Not ‘Q’ & ‘Z’, since three letters per digit seemed enough – especially when one omitted ‘difficult’ letters; But the other letters were assigned. Words were selected to complete what could be made of the letters assigned to the first two digits of the exchange. This practice may have even constrained the assignment of exchanges, as people chose a word appropriate for the locality, and then requested the associated exchange numbers be issued. Perhaps because few words start with the letters from ‘J,K,L’ and ‘J,K,L’, the ‘55×’ exchanges were never issued. That, along with ‘×55’ having the second two digits the same (and so being reserved as service codes), left ‘555’ available for ‘Hollywood’ to use freely for bogus numbers.

  The last available area code, of the old pattern (905), was assigned to Toronto in 1993; it having been earlier used (along with 706 and 903) for Mexico, before Mexico was fully separated from country-code ‘1.’

  The following table records words used for representation of the first two digits of exchanges, most of it is from old advertising literature. In some listings there were only four digits following the name. In some listings the second letter was not capitalised. Some of these inherent uncertainties are reproduced here by notation or preservation of the format, others have been unfortunately lost.

  The information and errors herein have been compiled from various sources. Worthy of special mention are the following:

• Thomas Wray, for various corrections and recommendations, including pointing out that time lunes are not zones.
• Jean-Pierre Morneault for suggesting that the original file (covering City Codes in Country Code 1) be expanded with international Country Codes.
• Dave Oheare, for sourcing the ITU Standard Grammar information.
• British Telephone, for being the source of most of the information on calls to ships at sea.
• Bell Canada (serving what was formerly Upper and Lower Canada) for being the primary source of Country Code information.
• Toronto Dominion Visa and NBTell, for additional and corroborating Country Code data.
• Rand M^cNally for the most comprehensive information on Time Lunes around the globe, and also Toronto Dominion Visa, Bell-Can. and NBTell for corroboration of and additions to same.

  The following pages provide, and/or connect to, alternate sources of similar and related information, as maintained by other people and/or organisations:

• http://www.LincMad.com, providing much of this information in other formats; including, low on the page, a data-entry block for Look-Up to convert North-American Area Code and Exchange to a location.
• [The Look-Up, mentioned above, seems to use http://www.thedirectory.org which seems to references http://www.intelius.com – These references also locate cel’phones, and un-listed numbers. The latter reference, unlike the earlier two, which process only area-code and exchange, processes the whole number – and, in my experience, invites you to pay for the data they suggest they can make available.]
• https://www.AllAreaCodes.com/, where area-codes in the Country-Code-1 region (USA and Canada) are variously indexed, including map-based searchability. The USA map reveals a significant level of boundary detail (including roads and rivers – and even street-names and building-shapes, in some sections), when zoomed into.
• http://www.fonefinder.net, where one can search by number, or country & city.
• http://www.nanpa.com, a site similar to the above, but restricted to Notrh America, and from which differently formatted searches may be performed; including a page where one may queery the status of a North-American area code.
• http://www.wtng.info, a site similar to the above, but international in scope.
• http://www.nationalnanpa.com has a USA country map showing states; and quick links to state maps showing area code boundries and overlays.
• http://www.cnac.ca (maintained by the Canadian Numbering Administrator), has a non-interactive map showing Canadan area code coverage.
• A page by Bennet Yee, providing North-American Area-Code to Time-Lune data in another format.
• A few sites providing dates for change into and out of DST are at: http://www.timeanddate.com; and http://webexhibits.org.
• http://www.statoids.com has information on currently observed time lunes.
• http://www.timeanddate.com/library/abbreviations/timezones/; Time zone Abbreviations.
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_zone; Various maps of the Time Lunes.
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_country_calling_codes; A List of country calling codes.
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_North_American_Numbering_Plan_area_codes; A List of North American Numbering Plan area codes
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E.164; Notes on the ITU Standard format for international telephone numbers.
• http://www.convertit.com/Global/World_Time/Time_Zones_of_the_World.PDF, being a map, in .pdf format, with time lunes well marked (when viewed with sufficient zoom).

Copyright

This material is Copyright (© 1996, through 2013), Robert W. C. Stevens. Reproduction, with this copyright notice intact, is permitted – but sharing the URL would save a tree, and probably make more sense.