Making International Calls FAQ

20th June 2016

If you’re inexperienced with making international calls but there is now a need for you to make them, whether for personal or business purposes, then you could be excused for feeling daunted. Maybe a lot of the terminology commonly attached to international calling instructions is leaving you feeling bewildered, or you’re simply finding those instructions hard to follow. That’s why we have written this FAQ – to clear much of the confusion!

How do you make an international call?

The same way that you make a domestic call, provided that you have the right number and can follow some other little rules. The number that you need to dial for an international call consists of three elements: the origination country exit code, destination country code and main telephone number, in that order.

Every country has its own exit code when you are calling to outside that territory; the UK’s exit code is 00. Plus, every country has its own code for incoming calls to that area; so, if you wanted to get in touch with a contact in France, this code you need to remember is 33.

Why is my international call not getting through?

There are various possible reasons. One is that you may have mistakenly failed to drop the number’s “trunk code”; this is a digit, typically 0, often placed before numbers, but only for domestic calls. It’s necessary to omit this digit when dialling to another country.

Another possible reason is that the telephone service provider of the number you are trying to call has actually blocked international calling. Therefore, make sure that you are actually allowed to make an international call before you attempt to do so. Also, if you’re dialling a mobile number, you would typically need to use a national dialling format in place of an area code; most countries do not include area codes in mobile numbers.

International calling seems expensive – is there a good way of cutting the costs?

You might be in a situation where you are eager to make international calls fairly regularly – for example, if you have a friend or relative living abroad who you want to keep in close contact with, or you run a company that deals with a lot of clients based outside the UK. In such a situation, you could feel daunted when you see the per-minute charges for reaching various countries and wonder whether you could find a way of cutting those charges.

The good news is that, by creating a PIN-less calling account with Planet Numbers, it is indeed possible to land access to much cheaper international calls. Let’s assume, for example, that you wanted to make frequent calls to India. They would cost you 60p per minute with BT; however, with Planet Numbers, they would set you back a mere 2p per minute. That means that you could save a massive £34.80 per hour when calling with us! After making your account, you could call one of our account recognition access numbers for making cheap calls to India.

Read more Cheap International Call FAQs

Comments are closed.