Your Indian Mobile Number Starts With Country Code +91; Do You Know Why?

We make hundreds of calls in our day to day life, most of them are to an Indian mobile number. Every Indian contact number will begin with country code +91, but have you ever thought why? Who gave this country code? Why is it this only? Answers to all these questions are here in the article.

Let’s understand the basics before getting to Indian mobile number

The international public telecommunication numbering scheme utilized by the Public Switched Telephone Network (PSTN) is specified by an International Telecommunication Union (ITU) recommendation

The first official list of telephone country codes was created by CCITT (now ITU), the organization that preceded the ITU Telecommunication Standardization Sector. It was listed in the CCITT (now ITU) Blue Book from 1964.

The list was organized by creating nine zones as follows.

Zone 1= US, Canada, Bermuda and other Caribbean islands

Zone 2= Africa and other Atlantic islands

Zone 3 & 4 = Europe

Zone 5 = Mexico, South America, Central America

Zone 6 = Oceania and South-East Asia

Zone 7 = Russia, former Soviet Union

Zone 8 = East Asia and other special services

Zone 9 = South, Central, West Asia and Middle East.

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But how did the countries get the code?

There was a very simple logic behind this. The shortest and easiest codes were assigned to the most well-known and populated nations that were under the supervision of the committee in charge of creating standardized international codes.

The United States of America received a score of +1 due to its highly developed phone network, highly connected population, and high call volume.

Other than the United States, only USSR got single digit access, +7. It was a rather bigger number because during that time, the country did not have a good network. The numbering scheme was regionally divided for the rest of the world, though it’s still unclear why Africa received the +2 Series!

Similar reasoning was applied erratically lower down the hierarchy; as a result, the most populous countries—Australia, Japan, and India—received +61, +81, and +91, respectively. However, this doesn’t account for Peru, Holland, and Switzerland, which received +51, +31, and +41.