[Asterisk-Users] country code list

Tue Oct 11 02:14:39 MST 2005

On Tue, 2005-10-11 at 07:53 +0100, Chris Bagnall wrote:
> For the UK, your most accurate source of info is probably the first few
> pages of the BT Phone Book (delivered free to all UK homes/businesses).
> There's quite a comprehensive list of what each number range is for, how it
> breaks down, etc.
> 

Ok, then let me ask the obvious, can anyone with a phone book publish
that info?  Although there its fairly easy restrict everything that
doesnt start with a 1 & 2 and you are safe, start opening that up and
you may or may not be depending on provider (some that include uk
landlines do not incl freephone for example).

> I did find a list somewhere of the useful special services (1xxx.) such as
> BT customer services, line tests, etc. that I can copy from one of our
> clients' dialplans if it'd be any help?

dont most of those start with 14?  like to enable/disable caller id and
such.  But regardless I am more interested in what is valid landlines in
various countries, not just the UK but all countries.

When trying to create a dialplan for voipbuster to avoid charges I
noticed that several of the countries didnt appear to have identifable
mobile numbers (at least according to wikipedia) and others werent
listed at all.  This means that there are several countries I cant tell.

But voipbuster aside this information is generally a good thing to have
for anyone who wants to either use a voip service provider and not be
charged the sometimes insane termination rates to mobiles, or worse call
a premium service number for $2511/minute (as was the case with a +1 809
number once).

Then for the voip provider side, there are rates sheets but sometimes
they are incomplete on what is what, and carriers have pass through
billing.  Take UK premium most people list those as 44 9xx or 44 90x,
but both of those arent entirely correct.  44 945 is a (now deprecated)
pager prefix (or was that 941?).  4490x and 91x are premium service
numbers, block only 90x and you miss the 91x which can be as much as
1.50 GBP/min (and despite the hype icstis does have exemptions on
certification for those that get a premium number even at the 1.50
GBP/min rate).  The cost per call to some UK premium can be quite high
when its a 'call for payment of a product' type service. 

Then take into account other countries with looser telecom laws
(liechtenstein, afganistan are two that come immediatly to mind).
People have been setting up phone companies there then changing the
published rate for termination to their phone company and with pass
through billing the voip provider gets hosed unless they too have pass
through to their end user (I bet that will become more popular in the
near future - although by the time it happens the credit/debit card can
be canceled etc).  This is basically what happened to nuphone to the
tune of $450k in one month.

All of these factors need to be addressed in a good dialplan, although
its really hard to keep one as dynamic as it would need to be (ie
someone sets up a new phone company, you need to know it exists, maybe
mark it as 'new' for a while to see if any suspicous traffic comes in -
if you can even tell if its new).  With other countries where the phone
numbering system is fairly static and fairly regulated the lists
shouldnt be that hard to create. 

This would be a nice wiki page on voip-info.org if people contribute the
numbers from their localities to at least get it started, and over time
it would grow to something quite usable.

I used to have a itu.org or something page that had number formatting
for each country although I dont think that it went into what is and
what wasnt mobile, special services, and landlines.  will keep trying to
find that again.

-- 
Trixter http://www.0xdecafbad.com     Bret McDanel
UK +44 870 340 4605   Germany +49 801 777 555 3402
US +1 360 207 0479 or +1 516 687 5200
FreeWorldDialup: 635378
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