Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!accuvax.nwu.edu!nucsrl!telecom-request From: Ge' Weijers Newsgroups: comp.dcom.telecom Subject: Re: Why Not 00 as the International Prefix in the US? Message-ID: <1904@accuvax.nwu.edu> Date: 6 Dec 89 17:44:15 GMT Sender: news@accuvax.nwu.edu Organization: TELECOM Digest Lines: 42 Approved: Telecom@eecs.nwu.edu X-Submissions-To: telecom@eecs.nwu.edu X-Administrivia-To: telecom-request@eecs.nwu.edu X-Telecom-Digest: Volume 9, Issue 557, message 7 of 11 goudreau@dg-rtp.dg.com (Bob Goudreau) writes: >As someone has already pointed out, there are a lot more people and >phones here in the NANP (US, Canada, much of the Caribbean) using 011 >as the prefix than there are in Europe using 00 as the prefix. If >such a change is really needed (and I don't agree that it is), it >sounds like *you* should change to conform to the majority, not us. >(And no, I'm not advocating such a change, I'm merely pointing out the >absurdity of the rationale.) There are a lot of places using 00. A short list: Algeria, Argentina, Aruba, Brazil, Brunei, Chili, Peoples Republic of China, Costa Rica, Cyprus, Federal Republic of Germany, Ecuador, Egypt, Philipines Gabon, Gibraltar, Greece, Guatemala, Hungaria, India, Indonesia, Iran, Israel, Italy, Ivory Coast, Jordania, Cameroon, Kuwayt, Libya, Luxemburg (nice country, no area codes!), Malaysia, Morocco, Dutch Antilles, Nepal, New Zealand, North Yemen, Oman, Austria, Pakistan, Panama, Peru, Poland, Portugal (Porto 07) Saudi Arabia, Senegal, Sri Lanka, Togo, Czechoslovakia, Tunesia, Venezuela, United Arab Emirates, Zambia, Switzerland. I've translated this out of a list provided by the Dutch PTT, which explains the order and odd spelling of some names (I'm not going to look them all up in the Webster on my desk.) To make my point: this makes for a lot of telephones. So why make all those people convert to 010. Incidentally 010 is the area code for Rotterdam in the Netherlands. The Dutch system uses 00x for special services like operator assistance, the time, the weather and the likes. They are moving these services to 06xxxxxx numbers though. Maybe we are converting from 09 to 00 for international access. Does anyone know? (maybe someone from DNL cares to comment?) In the meantime use a good agenda. Ge' Weijers Internet/UUCP: ge@cs.kun.nl Faculty of Mathematics and Computer Science, (uunet.uu.net!cs.kun.nl!ge) University of Nijmegen, Toernooiveld 1 6525 ED Nijmegen, the Netherlands tel. +3180612483 (UTC-2)