An old friend of mine gave me his cell number but it appears to be invalid. I’m assuming it has too many digits or something.
The format is 32 2 474 XX XX XX
I know the 32 is the international prefix for belgium, I don’t know about the rest.
Any ideas?
From what I found on the Web it looks like a plausible number in the Proximus network if you drop the single 2, i.e. +32 474 XX XX XX
Maybe the last 2 numbers are an internal extension? Isn’t “2” Brussels’ or Antwerp’s city code? That second number is the city code.
Most non-North American countries do not follow the 10-digit format used in the US and Canada. After the country code the number of digits varies from one region to another. Don’t try to impose your local phone number structure onto a European model, because it won’t fit.
If it’s a cellphone number (as stated in the OP) the number after the country code is unlikely to be a city code - all European cellphone networks that I know of don’t use the country’s area code system but rather a number to access the network, i.e. there is nothing in the cellphone number to indicate where in the country the subscriber’s residence is. 474 seems to be one of the prefix assigned to cell phone networks in Belgium, hence my guess above in the second post.
As FatBaldGuy says, don’t worry about the number of digits. I used to do business with a company in Italy and their fax number had a different number of digits than their voice line. Cell numbers can have who-knows-what.
Don’t count, just dial.
Err, my friend emailed me yesterday and told me to drop the 2. I guess something just went wrong the first time I tried that.
Oh well, mystery solved anyways.