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Country code

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A country code is a short alphanumeric identification code for countries and dependent areas. Its primary use is in data processing and communications. Several identification systems have been developed.

The term country code frequently refers to ISO 3166-1 alpha-2, as well as the telephone country code, which is embodied in the E.164 recommendation by the International Telecommunication Union (ITU).

ISO 3166-1

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The standard ISO 3166-1 defines short identification codes for most countries and dependent areas:

The two-letter codes are used as the basis for other codes and applications, for example,

Other applications are defined in ISO 3166-1 alpha-2.

ITU country codes

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In telecommunications, a country code, or international subscriber dialing (ISD) code, is a telephone number prefix used in international direct dialing (IDD) and for destination routing of telephone calls to a country other than the caller's. A country or region with an autonomous telephone administration must apply for membership in the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) to participate in the international public switched telephone network (PSTN). County codes are defined by the ITU-T section of the ITU in standards E.123 and E.164.

Country codes constitute the international telephone numbering plan, and are dialed only when calling a telephone number in another country. They are dialed before the national telephone number. International calls require at least one additional prefix to be dialing before the country code, to connect the call to international circuits, the international call prefix. When printing telephone numbers this is indicated by a plus-sign (+) in front of a complete international telephone number, per recommendation E164 by the ITU.

History

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The International Telecommunications Union (ITU) created country codes for international dialing, first introduced in 1960 for Europe and expanded globally in 1964. Numbers were typically allocated by landmass and then subdivided by the capacity of each network at the time. France, the United Kingdom, the USA and USSR obtained preferential numbers due to their dominance in telecommunications at the time whilst China was able to ensure that Taiwan was officially left unlisted whilst being allocated the code "886".[1]

Other country codes

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The developers of ISO 3166 intended that in time it would replace other coding systems.

Other codings

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Country identities may be encoded in the following coding systems:

  • The initial digits of International Standard Book Numbers (ISBN) are group identifiers for countries, areas, or language regions.
  • The first three digits of GS1 Company Prefixes used to identify products, for example, in barcodes, designate (national) numbering agencies.

Lists of country codes by country

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A - B - C - D–E - F - G - H–I - J–K - L - M - N - O–Q - R - S - T - U–Z

See also

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References

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  1. ^ "How were telephone dialling codes allocated to countries - eg 32 for Belgium, 33 for France, 44 for UK? | Notes and Queries | guardian.co.uk". www.theguardian.com. Retrieved 2024-09-06.
  2. ^ "Announcing Approval of the Withdrawal of Ten Federal Information Processing Standards (FIPS)". Federal Register. 73 (170): 51276. Sep 2, 2008. E8-20138.
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