When I give my telephone number to someone else in the US, it’s always “217-###-####.” Easy peasy.
But I’m expanding my business into Australia, New Zealand and the UK. How do I give a potential customer my telephone number here?
1+
The country code for the US is really easy: 1.
The precise method for dialling international calls varies somewhat amongst phone systems. The general convention is to advertise your number internationally as +1 217-###-####
Give it as “+1 217 XXX XXXX”.
The + signifies the international access code, whatever it may be, and indicates that a country code follows. The 1 is the country code of the US.
The fact that the country code of the US is the same as the sent-paid trunk dialling digit is confusing but true. This, within the US, you’d dial 1-217-xxx-xxx. Outside the US, you’d dial <international access code> 1 217 XXX XXXX, written as +1 217 XXX XXXX
Actually, 1 is the country code of the North American Numbering Plan, the telephone numbering plan shared by the US, Canada, and a bunch of smaller, mostly Caribbean, countries. But not Mexico, Cuba, or any of the Central American countries. Numbers in any NANP country are written as +1 XXX XXX XXXX, and you dial “domestically” to call between NANP countries.
This is why I can dial 1-217-XXX-XXXX to rreach you, even though I’m in Canada and it’s an international call for me. I don’t have to dial starting with 011.
Don;t leave the country code off. There’s a certain Very large Bank that writes the international collect number for contacting them as “506 864-XXXX”. They mean the number of their call centre in Moncton, NB, area code 506. But the way it’s wriotten, it look like it might be country code 506, which is Costa Rica! They should have written “+1 506 864 XXXX”.
Google search on country code for usa turns up many results. The first one yields these:
Australia to USA: 0011 + 1 + Area Code + Tel #
New Zealand to USA: 00 + 1 + Area Code + Tel #
United Kingdom to USA: 00 + 1 + Area Code + Tel #
Yes. This is why many people write + for the international access code. That way, when dialling, you can start with whatever the international access code is in your locality. The people printing the phone number don’t have to worry about listing the different international access codes for every locality they’re publishing the number in.
Note that on many, if not most, cell phones, the “+” is literally a plus sign. If you are in any country, you dial + to dial the internatinal access code in the country you are currently in. Then dial the country code you want to call, which is “1” for the U.S., as everyone has been saying.
That way you don’t have to remember the actual international access code as you travel from country to country.
If you can’t figure out how to dial a plus sign, look at your phone’s documentation. There’s almost always a way.
And if you’re on a cell phone, most worldwide cellular networks recognize + as a shortcut for the international dialing code. On my phones (all four of them) you get a + by holding down the 0 for a second or two.
That worked on my old phone. On my new phone, which has a full QWERTY keyboard, you press the O/+ key (which is different from the zero key on the numeric keypad) just once.