Just like with currency and number plates, country dialling codes have gone through an evolution to give us the list that we currently use today.
Since the development of the world zones, codes have been changing and updated following changes in countries’ names, state of independence from their colonisers and other political changes such as the merging or splitting of countries and states.
When you write down your telephone or mobile phone number, especially in international set-up, you will most likely be asked to indicate your country code.
If you are Tanzania this will be +255.
Other countries have their own codes and missing one number can lead you to make a very expensive international phone call.
Say you omit the 2 and type down +55 you will end up calling someone in Netherlands.
But how did these telephone dialling codes come into existence?
EVOLUTION
Just like with currency and number plates, country dialling codes have gone through an evolution to give us the list that we currently use today.
According to the International Telecommunications Union website, two technical committees were created in 1924 to standardise technical and operational questions of international long-distance telephony and telegraphy.
In 1956, these two technical committees were merged to become the International Telegraph and Telephone Consultative Committee (CCITT), which was later renamed ITU-T.
It is this international body that first assigned telephone codes to countries.
In 1960, in what was referred to as the Red Book, was a list of codes assigned to European countries then.
According to the World Telephone Numbering Guide, codes 00 to 19 were special codes with special routings or semi-automatic services.
The codes went up to 99. The countries assigned were European territory, including countries in the Middle East, Asia and North Africa as follows.
20 - Poland
21 - Algeria
22 - Belgium
23 - Austria
24 - (unassigned)
25 - Finland
26 - Arabia
27 - Cyprus
28 - Bulgaria
29 - Gibraltar
30 - Greece
31 - Egypt
32 - (unassigned)
33 - France
34 - Israel
35 - Hungary
36 - Turkey
37 - Lebanon
38 - Norway
39 - Italy
40 - Libya
41 - Jordan
42 - Portugal
43 - Malta
44 - Great Britain
45 - (unassigned)
46 - Sweden
47 - Romania
48 - Morocco
49 - Germany
50 - Spain
51 - (unassigned)
52 - Ireland
53 - (unassigned)
54 - Syria
55 - Netherlands
56 - (unassigned)
57 - Czechoslovakia
58 - (unassigned)
59 - Albania
60 - Luxembourg
61 - Denmark
62 - Tunisia
63 - Yugoslavia
64 - Iceland
65 - (unassigned)
66 - Switzerland
67 - (unassigned)
68, 69 - USSR
70 to 79 - European Republics / USSR
80 to 89 - spare codes
90 to 99 - intercontinental traffic
1964-1967
The CCITT developed a Blue Book in which dialling codes were arranged according to world zones. The world was divided into regions that had specific prefixes before the country dialling codes. According to the World Telephone Numbering Guide:
World Zone 1 – covered North and Central America which used +1,
World Zone 2 – Africa, in which Tanzania +255, falls. The Northern African countries that had first been assigned European codes were reassigned +2… numbers at this time.
World Zone 3 and 4 – Europe. Europe was assigned two numbers as a high number of countries required two digit country codes.
World Zone 5 - South America
World Zone 6- Oceania and Australia
World Zone 7- the then USSR
World Zone 8- Eastern Asia
World Zone 9- Western Asia and the Middle East. Here, countries such as Lebanon and Jordan that had been listed and assigned in the Red Book were reassigned +9 dial codes.
1967- PRESENT
Since the development of the world zones, codes have been changing and updated following changes in countries’ names, state of independence from their colonisers and other political changes such as the merging or splitting of countries and states.
Examples of this include:
+229 - Benin when its name changed from Dahomey upon 1975 independence from France.
+291 - Eritrea got a new code after it seceded from Ethiopia in 1993.
+37 - East Germany was deleted following the German reunification after the Cold War, the numbers are under country code +49 as of mid-1991.