China 86, Taiwan 886, What does ITU have to say to this? Intl ccountry codes are too close for comfort, some say
1 comment:
Anonymous
said...
I have always wondered why Taiwan was assigned the country code number of 886 for international calls, since the code for China, 86, is so close. It appears that whoever did the assigning of numbers considers Taiwan to be a part of China, since no other country in Asia has a code that is anywhere near the code number of another country. Vietnam is 84, the Philippines is 63, Thailand is 66 and Japan is 81. Indonesia has its own country code, 62, and Malaysia uses 60 as its code.
So why does Taiwan, the ROC, get a code that is so similar to China, the PRC? Is 886 just a subset is 86? I wonder: who doled out these numbers?
I did some research and found out. The International Telecommunications Union (ITU), which gives out these codes for international calls, publishes a list of 192 countries on its website, and Taiwan is not on the list. China and 191 other countries are. Taiwan is considered as part of China ("Taiwan, China - 886"). Can this mistake be corrected someday, with Taiwan issued a new international country code? Maybe 88 would do fine.
1 comment:
I have always wondered why Taiwan was assigned the country code number
of 886 for international calls, since the code for China, 86, is so
close. It appears
that whoever did the assigning of numbers considers Taiwan to be a
part of China, since no other country in Asia has a code that is
anywhere near
the code number of another country. Vietnam is 84, the Philippines is
63, Thailand is 66 and Japan is 81. Indonesia has its
own country code, 62, and Malaysia uses 60 as its code.
So why does Taiwan, the ROC, get a code that is so similar to China,
the PRC? Is 886 just a subset is 86? I wonder: who doled out these numbers?
I did some research and found out. The International
Telecommunications Union (ITU), which gives out these codes for
international calls, publishes a
list of 192
countries on its website, and Taiwan is not on the list. China and 191
other countries are. Taiwan is considered as part of China ("Taiwan,
China - 886"). Can this mistake be corrected someday, with Taiwan
issued a new international country code? Maybe 88 would do fine.
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