Dialing Internationally

No matter where you're staying while you're on the road, you can't just rely on the Internetyou might need to make international phone calls, too. Depending on what country you're in when you make the call, and what country you're trying to reach, you might not be able to remember the numbers you need to dial to make sure you get Paris, France, and not Paris, Texas.

Appendix B includes a full list of country codes and international access numbers to help you with that often-perplexing problem. But first, let's take a look at the different ways to get your call out of the country.

If you're staying at a hotel, take a look at the instructions near your hotel's phone and see if they list an access number for a long-distance line from your room. Some hotels require that you simply press 9 for any outside line; others have a different digit for long-distance or international; and still others require you to call the front desk and have the person there place the call for you.

INTERNATIONAL DIRECT-DIAL ACCESS CODES

You'll need to use an international direct-dial access code to get an international phone line. These numbers vary, but are not unique to each countryfor example, the United States and Canada both use 011 to get an international line, and most parts of Europe use 00. (See Appendix B for more on international direct-dial numbers.)

COUNTRY CODES

The country code is the national prefix that you must use when dialing a number in that particular country from another country. In most cases you will also need to dial a city or area code as well. For example, the city prefixes in most of Europe are anywhere from one to four digits (such as 1 for Paris, 20 for Amsterdam, and 6221 for Heidelberg), whereas the U.S. uses a three-digit area code, such as 212 for parts of New York City.

International phone dialing 101

The numbers that you dial when you make an international phone call vary, depending on the location you're calling and from where you're calling. For example, suppose you're in the United States and you're trying to dial a buddy in Paris. You would dial the following:011 [USA international access code] +

33 [the country code for France] +

1 [the city code for Paris] +

23 45 67 [the phone number]

Now, to make things more confusing, you might have looked on the Internet for the number that you want to call in Paris and found it listed as 01 23 45 67, adding an additional 0 pre.x in front of the Paris city code. This is the phone number that you would dial if you were already in France, or were calling from within Paris.

Many cities in Europe add a 0 at the beginning of their phone numbers, which is used for dialing within their own country. This 0 gets dropped when telephoning that number from outside that particular country.

If you were dialing this same friend at the same Parisian telephone number from another European country, you would dial the following:

00 [European international access code] +

33 [the country code for France] +

1 [the city code for Paris] +

23 45 67 [the phone number]

Finally, if you want to phone a friend in the U.S. from Europe, you'd also need to dial 00 .rst for international access, then 1 (the country code for the United States), and then the area code and phone number that you want to reach.

And remember, it's a lot cheaper to send text messages overseas from your mobile phone to another mobilesee Chapter 6.