Stephen Sprunk wrote:
On 31-Mar-12 13:10, Adam H. Kerman wrote:
Stephen Sprunk wrote:
On 31-Mar-12 10:48, Adam H. Kerman wrote:

+ 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 have a GSM handset.

So your dialing isn't broken by design, as it is with CDMA and iDEN
handsets (and, formerly, AMPS and TDMA).

You and your over-the-top opinions.

GSM dials calls in international format for the simple reason that it was
designed initially for European use, where there are 30 country codes.
How many country codes are there in the NANP, Steven?

If you dial "1" rather than "+1" for NANP calls, you are _not_ dialing
with a country code but rather with the long distance access code, which
AFAIK is optional on all NA mobile operators.

For the 27th time, Steven: GSM doesn't have a concept of trunk codes,
only international dialing format. My guess is that if the phone sees a
digit used as a trunk code from a land line, it eats it, but one of our
friends from UK with GSM, in which "0" is used as a trunk code from land
lines, would have to confirm that. The phone allows me to place calls
with certain shortcuts so I don't use the + nor "1" when calling within
NANP. Regardless, all calls are actually dialed in international dialing
format no matter what shortcut I might use.

In the area code of my cell phone's number, 7 digit home area code dialing
isn't allowed, so the cell phone is programmed not to use it as a shortcut.

Also, I assume that as all calls are dialed in international format,
the + doesn't actually insert the international dialing prefix in
any county. That would be as pointless as dialing plans that require use
of a trunk code even though both foreign and home area code calls are
dialed with the area code.

Inbound calls are presented with "1".

This is very confusing for most Merkins because our country code looks
very similar to our long-distance access code--only the presence of the
"+" distinguishes between the two.

You're the one who is confused here, as you seem to believe that GSM
has a concept of a trunk code as part of the way it sends the telephone
number. Also, "1" was never an NNTP-wide trunk code even though it was
somewhat common. It really depended on what switch the telephone company
deployed.

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.

You're talking about that fraud. Calls didn't even terminate there. The
telecom was splitting the long distance settlement fees with those
call centers.

Also, there are new countries in the NANP.

The fraud was in _not terminating_ the calls in the country in question.
The ridiculous int'l tolls themselves were (and still are) legitimate
for calls _actually terminated_ in those countries, though they have
come down in recent years for unrelated reasons.

No, they were premium rate numbers as well, not just ordinary international
per minute charges. They were attempting to collect a **** load of money.