[asterisk-users] International dialplans for Asterisk?

[Anselm Martin Hoffmeister]

Am Freitag, den 22.12.2006, 00:53 -0500 schrieb Doug Crompton:
> Question... What is the purpose of the + before the number? Does anyone
> actually have to enter it? If so how would you do it? It is not used in
> the US but do I see it come in on SIP lines CID. I assume the CID ignores
> it in the number as I do not see it on the display. It is however stored
> in asterisk and when doing CID comparisions it can be a problem.

The "+" is replaced by the telco you are connected to - by whatever the
local prefix for "international call" is. In the US and  Canada it will
be 011, in most parts of the world "00", and there is Russia with its
exotic "08 wait for beep 10"... The "+" should work in GSM mobile
networks and most SIP providers seem to accept it.

For callerid, there seem to be several cases. One of my providers (the
others manage better and always give "00492281234567" formatted numbers)
gives CID as "+491601234567" for calls from one German mobile network,
"491637654321" from a second network and "02281234567" from landline, so
my dialplan has to cope with that such that my endpoints show the proper
number. This is done by the following logic:

If number begins with "+", strip it.
If number begins with anything but 0, prepend "00".
If number begins with "0049", replace by "0".

Although in Germany you can dial "0049" (region) (number), readability
is better when there is only the "0" (region) (number) on the display -
especially as numbers tend to get long, and e.g. Grandstream BT-100 only
have a 12-digit display.

BTW the longest number I _think_ is planned in Germany is 9 digits after
the area code for 2- and 3-digit area codes, 8 for 4-, and 7 for 5-digit
areacodes. There is one exception though that I know of: One of our
ministeries has usually 55-4444 numbers (55 being their number, then
four digits DDI), but their fax numbers are 8-digit. Thus resulting in
total in 011-49-228-55-87654321 from US, 18 digits.

If you can, leave room for long numbers.

BR
Anselm