US number showing as UK number?

Random

Was in New York there last week. My sisters US mobile number showed up on my phone at one stage as +44..... - this is the country code for the UK.

Is this a common occurance? Or am I missing something?

Jam Man

I thought all US number began with 555........

Dellas

They use the UK to route alot of calls around the world. I am with BT Ireland at home and when I call someone down the road here in Ireland it comes up with +44 the UK prefix and not my Irish number.

Mobiles sometimes have the same if the calls are being routed Via a 3rd country

Gandhi

I use calling cards from a company based in Ireland, so if I call my brother in Germany (from the US) the caller ID shows up as a Dublin number.

Random

Jam Man wrote:

I thought all US number began with 555........

I'm obviously missing a reference here to some film or event?

Random

ciaranfo wrote:

I'm obviously missing a reference here to some film or event?

Very bizzare re the country codes, and very off putting too - my sisters number only shows up with her name on my phone with the +1 .. with the +44 I'd usually just ignore it.

Makes me wonder where the 3 missed calls from +2348 were today

Sam Vimes

ciaranfo wrote:

Very bizzare re the country codes, and very off putting too - my sisters number only shows up with her name on my phone with the +1 .. with the +44 I'd usually just ignore it.

Makes me wonder where the 3 missed calls from +2348 were today

whwy did you quote yourself?

Random

I didn't mean to quote myself Vimes ..

jrey1981

+234 is Nigeria!

Random

jrey1981 wrote:

+234 is Nigeria!

Wonderful, 3 missed calls from Nigeria today then! That's gotta be a record!

byrnefm

Err, maybe not - +234 doesn't necessarily mean it's from Nigeria

I had calls from a cousin in Chicago last year (area code for her area is (630)) and her call came in as +630xxxxxxx. Seems that sometimes when you get calls from the US to a mobile, that the initial 1 is missing. This happened again with a call from Boston (area code (781)), where it came in as +781.

spurious

ciaranfo wrote:

I'm obviously missing a reference here to some film or event?

In US films or TV, whenever they say a telephone number, it's always of the 555-xxxx format.

Such numbers don't exist - presumably if you gave out a real number a certain proportion of halfwits would try and ring it.

MiCr0

spurious wrote:

In US films or TV, whenever they say a telephone number, it's always of the 555-xxxx format.

Such numbers don't exist - presumably if you gave out a real number a certain proportion of halfwits would try and ring it.

From wikipedia

One of the main reasons the prefix exists is to avoid accidentally using real phone numbers in movies and television programmes - as there are many cases of people trying to call the numbers used. Unfortunately, in cases where the prefix isn't used, people with the same numbers receive many calls from people who have seen the movies or television programmes. A perfect example of this situation is with the 2003 film Bruce Almighty. The makers of the movie opted not to use the prefix, and several people whose phone numbers matched one mentioned in the film were inundated with callers asking for "God." Another widespread example was the fiasco caused by Tommy Tutone's hit 1982 song "867-5309/Jenny," which actually is a valid number in many area codes and commonly receives calls asking for "Jenny".

Random

byrnefm wrote:

Err, maybe not - +234 doesn't necessarily mean it's from Nigeria

I had calls from a cousin in Chicago last year (area code for her area is (630)) and her call came in as +630xxxxxxx. Seems that sometimes when you get calls from the US to a mobile, that the initial 1 is missing. This happened again with a call from Boston (area code (781)), where it came in as +781.

She has a Cingular US mobile, and was in the centre of Manhatten. Where does +234 come in there?


And thanks MiCr0

1huge1

Jam Man wrote:

I thought all US number began with 555........

ya i thought so to, has tv been lying to us all these years :eek:

Dellas

Jesus if I got a call from +234 and its Nigeria I would definatly ignore it . Thats were alot of scams have come from. There was a program on the BBC about second hand computers being given to Nigeria and some criminals got hold of them and copied all the personal details from the hard drive including bank details!!!! Id burn my PC and mobile from now on .

Random

Curiosity is our greatest gift and our greatest enemy! Or something ...

byrnefm

ciaranfo wrote:

She has a Cingular US mobile, and was in the centre of Manhatten. Where does +234 come in there?

In this case, 234 is her area code. See:

http://www.prodial.com/areacodes-Num.html

According to this, her phone's home area is Ohio. Even though she's in Manhatten, her phone's area code wouldn't change, in the same way that if you're in France (for example), your phone's code is still +3538x. US phones seem to leave out the initial '1' when displaying on foreign caller IDs, ie. her number should really be displaying as '+1234....'.

(Note: the US doesn't have mobile phone STD codes - if you buy a mobile in NY, you'll get a NY phone number, for example).