Excel Math: What's your number?

Forget the old dating question "What's your sign?"

A more important one is "What's your phone number?"

Of course we won't both tell each other our numbers, one of us will call the other and then our mobile phones will have the numbers.

I have had only one home number since I bought a house in 1976. But I've had 3-4 mobile phone numbers in the USA and 2 in Europe. Then 2 fax numbers, 5 company phone numbers, 2 modem/data numbers and about 7-8 more numbers (in my youth). That makes a total over 20.

And I don't have that many compared to some! I started to wonder how phone numbers are organized ...

Standards

The International Telecommunication Union establishes and maintains a standard for telephone numbers. The ITU is the second-oldest international committee, being established in 1865 to deal with the new telegraph technology. (Similar groups coordinate mail and postage rules, radio and television standards, time-keeping, etc.)

The ITU decided telephone numbers should be no more than 15 digits. Numbers begin with a 1-3 digit country code. When dialed from a mobile phone, international calls always start with a + sign.

Country Codes
Country codes are grouped by geographic area. You don't have to dial the country code when you are within the country, but you do when calling into another country.

1 US, Canada & Carribbean
2 Africa, Atlantic & Indian Ocean Islands
3 / 4 Europe
5 Mexico & Latin America
6 Southeast Asia
7 Russia & Khazakstan
8 East Asia
9 West & Central Asia & Middle East

Area Codes

Here's a list of North America's Area Codes.

Not all area codes are used. Some are reserved for special purposes, such as

211 Local community information
311 Reserved
411 Information
511 Travel & Traffic Information
555 Directory services (and phony movie phone numbers)
611 Reserved
710 Government
711 Special relays
800, 822, 833, 844, 855, 866, 877, 888 Toll Free numbers
811 Reserved
900 Pay-per-call services
911 Emergency services
999 Reserved

Number Formats

When I lived in England I was always irritated by my phone book software, which formatted numbers according to US standards, NOT the way my friends in the UK stated them or wrote them. And it does make a difference to your ear / hand coordination.

My UK phone number was 07817 421 XXX while my mind was thinking 781 742 XXXX.

At that time the UK numbers varied in the number of digits required, which really threw me for a loop.

And making it even MORE confusing for a caller, when giving their numbers the French (for instance) will NOT say neuf deux (nine two) but quatre vingt douze (four twenties and twelve) for those 2 digits.

And where Americans would say three three three, five five oh two,
a Brit might say treble three, double five nought two

Finally, to make an international call from the USA to the UK, you must remember this process:

Landline dialing to landline: 011 44 (drop the zero) 1932 843 XXX

Mobile dialing to landline: +44 (drop the zero) 1932 843 XXX

The number formats (of course) are different for mobile phones ...