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From: robert@cheviot.UUCP (Robert Stroud)
Newsgroups: net.news
Subject: Re: Phone Numbers
Message-ID: <205@cheviot.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 8-Jan-85 14:28:22 EST
Article-I.D.: cheviot.205
Posted: Tue Jan  8 14:28:22 1985
Date-Received: Thu, 10-Jan-85 07:06:48 EST
Reply-To: robert@cheviot.UUCP (Robert Stroud)
Organization: U. of Newcastle upon Tyne, U.K.
Lines: 24



Lindsay suggests that you think of +44 as being a pathname relative to
a world root. I like to think of the "+" as being whatever magic sequence
you dial to get onto the international telephone network in the particular
country you're dialling from, (just as you dial some magic sequence to get
long distance).  Once you are onto this network, what you dial
(including the 44 which happens to be the country code for the UK) should be
the same WHEREVER you are. This of course is the whole point of the convention.

In the UK "+" is 010, in the US it is 011. In France it is 19 (I think).
Again, in the UK the long distance sequence is 0, in the States it is 1 and
in France it is 18 (this one I'm not sure about but you should get the idea).

I have used this method to dial between various countries round Europe
from phone boxes whose instructions were in a language I couldn't understand
on several occasions. I have dialled the States in this way as well, but
when I was in California recently and tried to dial England, I was rather
surprised to discover I had to go through the operator, (and I always thought
you guys had the best telephone system in the world :-)!

Robert Stroud
Computing Laboratory,
University of Newcastle upon Tyne