I’m going by the ones stored in my phone - nine digits after the 353, with no leading zero.
You’re likely right, my Dublin numbers are old and of the form 01-xxx-xxxx. Haven’t used them for a few years. Bloody cow!
Depends where you’re calling. Dublin has a single digit - 1 - after the zero, and a seven-figure number after that. Down culchie-land the codes are longer, inversely proportional to the number of chromosomes they have ;). Mobiles have two digits after the leading zero (86, 87, 88), followed by seven figures.
Hehehe - I thought that the ever-lengthening German numbers posted by Colophon were indicative of the language in those parts.
That would explain it. I was looking at Donegal numbers.
But the 1 in North American numbers is actually the ‘sent-paid’ trunk dialling digit. It’s not part of the actual phone number; it indicates that you are paying for the call at the phone from which you are dialing. You can replace it with a 0 if you are calling collect or billing to a third number.
It’s merely an unfortunate and confusing coincidence that 1 is also the North American telephone country code (something I didn’t know until I studied the phone system in electronics school). Thus people can get away with writing their North American phone numbers as 1 xxx xxx xxxx; this form off the number is appropriate for all users outside the North American Numbering Plan.
However, users within North America have to remember to remove the one (and possibly the area code) based on where they are relative to the location of the number they are dialing. There is enough variability in dialling plans across North America that you cannot predict precisely how you will need to dial.
Likewise, the 0 quoted in UK phone numbers is not part of the phone number or even the area code; it’s the UK trunk dialling digit. This is why you leave it off when calling from overseas.
So both UK and North American phone numbers, the ones that actually identify your phone, are a max of 10 digits long. What you actually dial, though, may be longer, variably-so depending on where you are dialing from. A London, UK, number is 20 xxxx xxxx; locally, you dial xxxx xxxx; long-distance within the UK you dial 020 xxxx xxxx; from Toronto, I dial 011 44 20 xxxx xxxx.
That’s interesting. I don’t think the UK system is set up to handle billing this way at all - the various options live down at the “area code” level. Do you have a link handy for a curious observer?
What’s going on here is that the everyday nomenclature is different in different countries. UK area codes are never ever given without the leading zero. And so, until your comment (and subsequent googling/wikipedia-ing to elaborate on it), I wasn’t aware of what you describe.
Is there any comparable situation in the UK to replacing the 1 with a zero in the US? I can’t think of one (other than having mobile phones storing numbers with the international prefix +44…).
Very interesting. This explains so much of the incomprehension I encountered when trying to get an international phone database fixed in the US by American developers.
So, I’m interested: you say North America. Is Canada on the exact same system as the US (and some of the Caribbean)?
Actually to make a collect call here on a bog standard phone needs operator intervention as far as I can tell. I wonder how these things have evolved?
What’s really confusing with UK phone numbers now is that dialling within the same area code does not necessarily mean that you are making a local call! For example, all of Northern Ireland is now in the 028 code, but calls from one part of the province to another are not all charged at local rate. Similarly, both Portsmouth and Southampton are now in the 023 code, but depending on where you are calling from, Portsmouth may be a local call and Southampton a national one.
And let’s not even go into the Londoners who still insist on giving their phone numbers as seven digits, and continue to believe that there are two codes, 0207 and 0208 (actually three, as some London numbers now start with a 3!). I can only assume that these people always dial the full number including the dialling code, as dialling a seven-digit local number will not get you anywhere in London! :smack:
Voila! 
The Canadian Numbering And Dialing Plan (PDF), straight from the Canadian Numbering Administrator.
Then there’s the ‘dialing plan’:
(minor editing to make table legible, because the quote box seems to smash whitespace)
These prefixes are useful only within the NANP; from outside, you have to dial the country code 1.
“Station-to-Station Sent-Paid” is where the call is paid for at the originating phone, and you are calling another phone. When anyone answers, the call starts and you start paying. (This assumes long-distance caling, where you pay by the minute.)
One alternative, dialed with the 0 prefix, is a “person-to-person” call. You dial 0 plus the number, the operator calls the number and asks for a specific person, and you start paying only when that pwerson answers. This is also good for calling extensions, hotel rooms, etc. There is something like a $3.50 charge for a person-to-person call, and phone calls are so inexpensive these days, that it’s hardly ever used.
You can also use the 0 prefix to dial a ‘collect’ call. This is where the person you are calling pays. You dial 0 plus the number; the operator answers; you say, “I’d like to make a collect call, please”; the operator calls the person, and when they answer, says, “I have a collect call from <person>. Will you accept the charges?” If the answerer says yes, you talk. And they pay.
Back when I was in school, long-distance calls were a lot more expensive and I was a lot poorer, and mobile phones and calling cards were almost unknown. If you were stranded, often the only choice whas a pay phone. And the only way to make a long-distance sent-paid call from a pay phone was to feed it with a lot of coins (no dollar or two-dollar coins then, either!). I used to have to do make a collect call occaisionally.
I confess, I’ve been out of the country for many many years, and returning to this situation is confusing as hell. And I do make this mistake all the time, and always use the full code. I’m sure Londoners look at me askance as they do when I don’t know what to do with my Oyster card.
Is it still based on local exchanges? For instance, my mum and dads phone number has gone from <0xxx-12345>, to the national change expanding it to <01xxx-12345>, to the most recent (fifteen years ago-ish) to make it <01xxx-y12345> where the y is different depending on where the old tiny local exchange was.
As far as I know the top level <01xxx> numbers are all considered local, but perhaps in places where the number range is busier it is the y number that defines locality ie places where the base phone number has seven digits?
Yes. From the website of the NANPA, the North American Numbering Plan Authority
Welcome to the world of the large North American-style area code. It works similarly in Southern Ontario. Many of our area codes are large enough to require long-distance dialing between distant points. And in recent years, you have to dial all ten digits of the phone number instead of being able to leave the area code off for local calls.
But you can’t tell whether the number you are calling is long-distance just from its form!
If it’s local, you must dial xxx-xxx-xxxx. If it’s long-distance, you must dial 1-xxx-xxx-xxxx or 0-xxx-xxx-xxxx. Doing it the other way around causes an error. And the only way you can find out which way applies is to try.
(This applies only to the traditional phone companies. Mobile phones on the GSM system (about half of ours) let you dial +1 xxx xxx xxxx even for a local call, something that the landline companies do not let you do. I’m not sure about the CDMA mobile phone companies. I’m also not sure about cable phones.)
This is one of my pet peeves. I hate it. Pure ignorance.
On a related note, I recall a minor news item a while back, where some guy on trial tried to forge letters he claimed to have sent/received, which would have proved his innocence…but put in an 0161 number when the date of the letter would have made it 061. And some trainspotter in the prosecution spotted it.
By ‘trainspotter’ I presume you mean ‘phone geek’? 
Clearly a transatlantic terminology conflict What impresses me most is that it would have made a good plot for a TV courtroom drama, yet it happened for real.
Does the UK system still let you dial a local call without the 0+area code?
Yes.