What Happened To The Prefix?

One thing I'm proud of is my ability to keep an updated phonebook on all of my devices.   I have a little system which might sound crazy but I'll post about that later.

What I'm noticing is that somewhere in the course of a year the number 1 prefix has been omitted somehow for callers.  Remember about 2+ years ago when we had to start using the number 1 before the area code?  When did that change?  Did I miss it?

My phonebook contains numbers that outside of my area code are all labelled with the prefix.  Now when I get a phone call I'm stumped when I look at the number because it comes up without the prefix but it happens to be a call from someone that is in my contact list.  Lol so I end up asking the person if I don't recognize their voice "who is this?".  (my apologies to those that I've done this too... repeatedly)

So I ask... is the prefix in or out?  Or do I just need to remove it from my contact lists all together?

Comments

[Stefan Constantinescu]

The prefix is long gone. I don't know anyone who dials 1 in front of the number, it's always just that 10 digit string.

[Darla]

Well then I guess I'll have to adjust my address book then. I notice that its also not needed for text messages either. No more +1 before the number.

[Tony Quan]

The +1 prefix is still useful if you travel overseas frequently. In the GSM standard, the "+" symbol means "the international call prefix for the country the phone is in now" (for example, 011 in the US, although in most other countries it is 00). Making sure there's a +1 for every entry in your phone book means that when you take your phone overseas, you don't need to remember/look up that country's international call prefix when calling back home. I've taken my phone to several countries and the +1 has worked everywhere I've tried.

A short article on the topic is here:

http://www.kropla.com/dialcode.htm

The 3rd column of the table at the bottom lists the international call prefix for each country.

[Darla]

Thanks Tony! I figured that the initial concept for the prefix was so that all numbers could be identified by the international format. Its just weird that its no longer needed here in the US. I remember some years back that if you did in fact place a call without the prefix you got this recording telling you that you needed it.

[dthree]

I can't remember how long it's been since I needed to dial 1 before long distance on my cell phone, and that is both going back 1 yr on cingular and maybe 10 years on verizon. Still have to do it for my home phone, however.

[PhoneBoy]

All of the numbers in my phonebook have +1 on them for the very reason of travelling Internationally.

It actually irritates me that when I get a text message from someone outside the US, Cingular says it is coming from 011whatever. It's GSM, why can't you use +? Oh well, maybe when Cingular is able to convince the TDMA holdouts to go GSM...

[Aijoovai]

"In the GSM standard, the "+" symbol means ..."

... and not just in the GSM standard. It's a _global_ standard used by all telephone systems around the world as the provided link notes.

Using the +[country code]... format is the way to go for all numbers if you ever travel outside your country. But it's also a good idea in case you ever send numbers to anyone outside the country, too.

It's sometimes really difficult to figure out if a phone number you've received to another country already includes the local area code, the country code or if it's in some other format (like sometimes phone numbers of Latin American hotels are provided in the American format 011-[country code]...). I can think of many funnier guessing games than what to add to or omit from a phone number that I need to reach.

The world is flat.

[Rafael Oliveira]

Wow, checking the above table it's great to see there are worse places thanb Brazil to dial from...
Here we have to dial the operator (carrier) code before the area prefix, in addition to having 8-character numbers. The international prefix isn't used domestically.
That leads to a question, can I define a "prefix" somewhere and tell the phone (I have an N-80) to dial just the number or the entire thing?
Thanks!