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From: JMS@mis.Arizona.EDU (Programmin' up a storm.)
Newsgroups: comp.dcom.telecom
Subject: Re: How Should Telephone Numbers be Listed?
Message-ID: <11334@accuvax.nwu.edu>
Date: 25 Aug 90 17:15:03 GMT
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X-Telecom-Digest: Volume 10, Issue 594, Message 7 of 7


I'm at home, so I don't have my Blue Books huddled around me, but
there IS a CCITT standard for "how to write your telephone number,"
and it goes roughly like this:

	+1 602 795 3955

Because of the magic wonderfulness of the US country code being "1"
and the number we all use to access long distance being "1," this is
incredibly cosmic and confuses neither NA nor European subscribers.

There is specific advice NOT to put parentheses around the area code,
and there is discussion about writing it two ways: once for "national"
callers and once for "international" callers, with the national being
on the top, and the international on the bottom.

There is also a specific symbol (which looks kind of like a Q) that
you are supposed to put on the side of your number if you have an
answering machine (actually, a "device substituting for a subscriber
in his absence").  In fact, E.117 is the standard for what your
answering machine message should be.  Again, I forget the details.

On a similar vein: there was a discussion several years ago about the
# sign.  While this may be called "octothorpe" in Bell parlance, it is
not in CCITT parlance.  There is, however, a specific format for
displaying the sign, depending on whether you're in North America (in
which case it's slanted, look on your phone if you don't remember,
with a specific angle to the slant) or elsewhere, in which case it's
straight up-and-down (as my terminal is displaying it now; your
mileage may vary).  There are specific rules about the ratio of the
short pieces to the long pieces, as well.

In general, I think that a large percentage of the questions of this
nature in this newsfroup have good answers in the E-series
recommendations: the touch tones, why the tri-tone is SO DAMN LOUD,
etc.  If the Moderator agrees, I'd be willing to type in some of the
"official CCITT" answers to some of the more commonly and hotly
debated questions here. Note, of course, that the CCITT is the CCITT
and Bell is/was Bell, so no answer is authoritative -- and the history
is often more interesting than the answer.


Joel Snyder 
Member US Delegation to CCITT SG VII)


[Moderator's Note: Yes, please send along some CCITT 'questions and
answers' for the Digest.  PAT]