Patrick, I wanna ask you a question if that's OK. First I should tell you that I live in Europe. It's not clear to me: when you make an interstate call within the US is it necessary to dial 1 before the area code and number or can you dial just area code + number? What about when calling Canada or other NANPA country -- is the country code 1 necessary? Thanks:)
Dan
[TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: When _YOU_ in Europe and elsewhere dial the USA you use '1' as our _country code_ (which includes Canada, USA, various Carribbean places, etc.) When _WE_ here in these same places dial '1' it is between any two _area codes_ which are different. The general rule is we have to dial '1' between any two area codes in any of those places. Between USA states (and sometimes in the same _large_ city in the USA), USA and Canada, USA and Carribbean, no matter where, if my areacode is NNN and your area is XXX then we use '1' to call the other area code. Our _area codes_ in the USA/Canada are roughly eqivalent to what you call 'city codes' in Europe, or maybe, since so many of your countries are very small compared to our states/provinces (in Canada), our 'area codes' are eqivilent to your 'country codes'.It is NOT that we are 'dialing our country code' (as you are doing to reach us) but that we are telling the telephone switches to expect ten more digits from us rather than simply seven digits total, meaning a different area code will be included in the numeric address. And when we call any of _you in Europe_ or elewhere in the world, we have to use the prefix '011' to tell the switches what we want to do.
I will admit the international telephone dialing system is a bit American-centric and biased where '1' is concerned with USA calling. You mentioned earlier and requested a link for your 'callingabroad.com' pages which is now installed in our links here.