European Telephony Numbering Space

Last updated

With the intent of forming a trans-Europe numbering plan as an option (or then future movement) for anyone needing multi-national European telephone presence, the ITU allocated country calling code +388 as a subdivided, catch-all container for such services. This was designated the European Telephony Numbering Space or ETNS.

Contents

Although some ETNS numbers were assigned, few phone companies supported connecting calls to ETNS.

Because of limited support, ETNS was suspended in 2005 and abolished in 2008. All ETS numbers were cancelled by the beginning of 2010. The +388 code was scheduled to be reclaimed by the ITU at the end of 2010; [1] as of late 2011 it was listed by ITU as "Group of countries, shared code". [2]

See also list of country calling codes.

Allocation area

Geographically the +388 "country" code was an overlay on top of all the pre-existing, state-bounded country codes of the countries in Europe. Among "special" country codes, +388 was unique in that it was both supranational yet geographically bounded (other special codes, such as +881 and freephone +800, are completely international).

Instead of being subdivided geographically as in a typical numbering plan, the ETNS was intended to be subdivided by type of service or customer. It would therefore not have been possible to reverse engineer the location of an owner of an ETNS number based on the characteristics of the phone number. The numbers were also not allocated in blocks to individual carrier companies and were therefore intended to be portable. Carriers needed to have ETNS translation capability, or routing agreement with a carrier that did, in order for its customers to successfully call ETNS numbers.

Subdivision

Country Groups

Specifically, ETNS was intended to be only one of a potentially larger set of European "country groups" participating in a shared regional overlay numbering plan. The only country group that comprised the ETNS was given an identification code of 3, which came after the +388 country code.

Services

After the country group identification code, the number space was divided according to service, indicated by a European Service Identity code. The table lists the service designations (country code, identification code, and ESI code) available under ETNS:

European Service Identity codes

  • Public service application: 3883 1
  • Customer service application: 3883 3
  • Corporate networks: 3883 5
  • Personal numbering: 3883 7

See also

Related Research Articles

An automatic number announcement circuit (ANAC) is a component of a central office of a telephone company that provides a service to installation and service technicians to determine the telephone number of a telephone line. The facility has a telephone number that may be called to listen to an automatic announcement that includes the caller's telephone number. The ANAC facility is useful primarily during the installation of landline telephones to quickly identify one of multiple wire pairs in a bundle or at a termination point.

A country code is a short alphanumeric identification code for countries and dependent areas. Its primary use is in data processing and communications. Several identification systems have been developed.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">E.164</span> ITU-T Recommendation for telephone numbering

E.164 is an international standard, titled The international public telecommunication numbering plan, that defines a numbering plan for the worldwide public switched telephone network (PSTN) and some other data networks.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">North American Numbering Plan</span> Integrated telephone numbering plan of twenty North American countries

The North American Numbering Plan is a telephone numbering plan for twenty-five regions in twenty countries, primarily in North America and the Caribbean. This group is historically known as World Zone 1 and has the telephone country code 1. Some North American countries, most notably Mexico, do not participate with the NANP.

A toll-free telephone number or freephone number is a telephone number that is billed for all arriving calls. For the calling party, a call to a toll-free number from a landline is free of charge. A toll-free number is identified by a dialing prefix similar to an area code. The specific service access varies by country.

A telephone numbering plan is a type of numbering scheme used in telecommunication to assign telephone numbers to subscriber telephones or other telephony endpoints. Telephone numbers are the addresses of participants in a telephone network, reachable by a system of destination code routing. Telephone numbering plans are defined in each of the administrative regions of the public switched telephone network (PSTN) and in private telephone networks.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Area codes 416, 647, and 437</span> Telephone area codes for Toronto, Ontario

Area codes 416, 647, and 437 are telephone area codes in the North American Numbering Plan (NANP) for the city of Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Area code 416 is one of the original North American area codes created by the American Telephone and Telegraph Company (AT&T) in 1947. Area codes 647 and 437 are additional area codes for the same numbering plan area (NPA), forming an overlay numbering plan.

E.123 is an international standard by the Telecommunication Standardization Sector of the International Telecommunication Union (ITU-T), entitled Notation for national and international telephone numbers, e-mail addresses and Web addresses. It provides guidelines for the presentation of telephone numbers, email addresses, and web addresses in print, on letterheads, and similar purposes.

In telecommunications, an area code overlay complex is a telephone numbering plan that assigns multiple area codes to the same geographic numbering plan area (NPA). Area code overlays are implemented in territories of the North American Numbering Plan (NANP) to mitigate exhaustion of central office codes in growth areas. The method has been in use since 1992, and has been the exclusive method of area code relief since 2007.

Telephone number pooling, thousands-block number pooling, or just number pooling, is a method of allocating telephony numbering space of the North American Numbering Plan in the United States. The method allocates telephone numbers in blocks of 1,000 consecutive numbers of a given central office code to telephony service providers. In the United States it replaced the practice of allocating all 10,000 numbers of a central office prefix at a time. Under number pooling, the entire prefix is assigned to a rate center, to be shared among all providers delivering services in that rate center. Number pooling reduced the quantity of unused telephone numbers in markets which have been fragmented between multiple service providers, avoided central office prefix exhaustion in high growth areas, and extended the lifetime of the North American telephone numbering plan without structure changes of telephone numbers. Telephone number pooling was first tested for area code 847 in Illinois in June 1998, and became national policy in a series of Federal Communications Commission (FCC) orders from 2000 to 2003.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Telephone numbers in Serbia</span>

Regulation of the telephone numbers in Serbia is under the responsibility of the Regulatory Agency of Electronic Communication and Mail Services (RATEL), independent regulatory authority. The country calling code of Serbia is +381. The country has an open telephone numbering plan, with most numbers consisting of a 2- or 3-digit calling code and a 6-7 digits of customer number.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Area codes 678, 470, and 943</span> Telephone area codes for the Atlanta metropolitan area

Area codes 678, 470, and 943 are telephone area codes in the North American Numbering Plan (NANP) for the U.S. State of Georgia in the Atlanta metropolitan area. The area codes are assigned in an overlay plan to a combined numbering plan area (NPA) consisting of 404 and 770.

International Networks is the name given by the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) to country calling codes +882 and +883, and serves as a catch-all for telephone services not dedicated to a single country. Satellite telephone carriers, especially those with worldwide service, are allocated within the Global Mobile Satellite System (GMSS), country code +881, with the exception of non-terrestrial Inmarsat, country code 870.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Telephone numbers in Europe</span>

Telephone numbers in Europe are managed by the national telecommunications authorities of each country. Most country codes start with 3 and 4, but some countries that by the Copenhagen criteria are considered part of Europe have country codes starting on numbers most common outside of Europe.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Telephone numbers in Italy</span>

Telephone numbers in Italy are managed by the Autorità per le Garanzie nelle Comunicazioni (AGCOM), a national regulatory authority for the communication industry located in Rome.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Telephone numbers in Germany</span>

The regulation of telephone numbers in Germany is the responsibility of the Federal Network Agency of the German government. The agency has a mandate to telecommunications in Germany and other infrastructure systems.

Telephone numbers in Canada follow the fixed-length format of the North American Numbering Plan (NANP) of a three-digit area code, a three-digit central office code, and a four-digit station or line code. This is represented as NPA NXX XXXX.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Telephone number</span> Sequence of digits assigned to a telephone subscription

A telephone number is a sequence of digits assigned to a landline telephone subscriber station connected to a telephone line or to a wireless electronic telephony device, such as a radio telephone or a mobile telephone, or to other devices for data transmission via the public switched telephone network (PSTN), or other public and private networks. Modern smart phones have added a built-in layer of abstraction whereby individuals or businesses are saved into a contacts application and the numbers no longer have to be written down or memorized.

Toll-free telephone numbers in the North American Numbering Plan have the area code prefix 800, 833, 844, 855, 866, 877, and 888. Additionally, area codes 822, 880 through 887, and 889 are reserved for toll-free use in the future. 811 is excluded because it is a special dialing code in the group NXX for various other purposes.

References

  1. http://www.ero.dk/etns Archived 9 June 2011 at the Wayback Machine
  2. List of ITU-T Recommendation E.164 assigned country codes as of 1 November 2011