On 31-Mar-12 10:48, Adam H. Kerman wrote:
Graham Nye wrote:
On 30/03/2012 21:17, Adam H. Kerman wrote:
Right. Callers from outside your country sure appreciate that
caller pays surcharge on top of the charge for international long distance,
as it's not readily apparent to foreigners that caller pays applies.

Anyone dialling from outside the UK can spot a UK mobile number as
it will start +44 7... (where + is 011 for NANP countries).

+ is the international instruction to dial the routing digits to make
an international call. I believe we all recognize it.

You'd be surprised. Many Americans probably don't know what our int'l
dialing prefix is since they've never used it--and it's not necessary
for int'l calls to other countries in the NANP.

(I've run into numerous people that genuinely think "011" is part of the
phone number for overseas calls--perhaps a strange area code. And, yes,
sometimes they try to dial "1" first.)

Also, on some mobile phones, the int'l prefix is actually "01", which
many people may not distinguish from the "1" that sometimes precedes
NANP calls (including Caller ID, on some carriers).

Worse, some carriers do not present _any_ sort of prefix for Caller ID,
so int'l calls come in _looking like_ domestic calls. For instance, I
remember a call from a former employer's Brussels office, which had 10
digits and was displayed on my phone's screen as (322) xxx-xxxx. I
happen to know area code 322 was reserved* and realized it must have
been from somewhere in Europe, but most Americans wouldn't--and they
wouldn't know how to return that call if they missed it.

(* All "Easily Remembered Codes", which means those with identical
trailing digits, are reserved for special purposes.)

It's up to your calltime provider to advise you how much calls will
cost. (Who else can say?)

My service won't know in advance under all circumstances.

Can you provide an example? I can't think of one.

I do note that several countries in NANP have surcharged numbers, I
assume mainly for caller pays mobile. That should be a surprise to
anyone.

I'm not aware of any surcharged numbers other than the well-known
(within the NANP, at least) 900 and 976 numbers. There are several
countries in the NANP that charge ridiculous int'l toll rates for
numbers, hoping that clueless Americans can be enticed into dialing
them, but that's it. These were formerly all grouped into area code
809, but now they're spread among a dozen or so area codes, so it's more
difficult to avoid them without checking the number first.

S

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