With the intent of forming a trans-

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as an option (or then future movement) for anyone needing multi-national European

telephone A telephone is a telecommunications device that permits two or more users to conduct a conversation when they are too far apart to be easily heard directly. A telephone converts sound, typically and most efficiently the human voice, into el ...

presence, the ITU allocated

country calling code Country calling codes or country dial-in codes are telephone number prefixes for reaching telephone subscribers in the networks of the member countries or regions of the International Telecommunication Union (ITU). The codes are defined by the ...

+388 as a subdivided, catch-all container for such services. This was designated the European Telephony Numbering Space or ETNS. Although some ETNS numbers were assigned, few phone companies supported connecting calls to ETNS. Because of limited support, and the belief that the need for ETNS was superseded by

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s, ETNS was suspended in 2005 and abolished in 2008. All ETS numbers were cancelled by the beginning of 2010. The +388 code was scheduled to be reclaimed by the ITU at the end of 2010; as of late 2011 it was listed by ITU as "Group of countries, shared code".List of ITU-T Recommendation E.164 assigned country codes as of 1 November 2011
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list of country calling codes Country calling codes or country dial-in codes are telephone number prefixes for reaching telephone subscribers in the networks of the member countries or regions of the International Telecommunication Union (ITU). The codes are defined by the ...

Allocation area

Geographically the +388 "country" code was an overlay on top of all the pre-existing, state-bounded country codes of the countries in Europe. Among "special" country codes, +388 was unique in that it was both supranational yet geographically bounded (other special codes, such as +881 and

freephone A toll-free telephone number or freephone number is a telephone number that is billed for all arriving calls. For the calling party, a call to a toll-free number from a landline is free of charge. A toll-free number is identified by a dialing prefi ...

+800, are completely international). Instead of being subdivided geographically as in a typical numbering plan, the ETNS was intended to be subdivided by type of service or customer. It would therefore not have been possible to

reverse engineer Reverse engineering (also known as backwards engineering or back engineering) is a process or method through which one attempts to understand through deductive reasoning how a previously made device, process, system, or piece of software accompli ...

the location of an owner of an ETNS number based on the characteristics of the phone number. The numbers were also not allocated in blocks to individual carrier companies and were therefore intended to be portable. Carriers needed to have ETNS translation capability, or routing agreement with a carrier that did, in order for its customers to successfully call ETNS numbers.

Subdivision

Country Groups

Specifically, ETNS was intended to be only one of a potentially larger set of European "country groups" participating in a shared regional overlay numbering plan. The only country group that comprised the ETNS was given an identification code of 3, which came after the +388 country code.

Services

After the country group identification code, the number space was divided according to service, indicated by a European Service Identity code. The table lists the service designations (country code, identification code, and ESI code) available under ETNS:

European Service Identity codes

*Public service application: 3883 1 *Customer service application: 3883 3 *Corporate networks: 3883 5 *Personal numbering: 3883 7

References

External links

European Radiocommunications OfficeARCOME presentation: "ETNS project and corresponding field trial description"
s information about European regional numbering {{Use dmy dates, date=March 2017 Telephone numbers