Hello My People,

I've got a question I would like someone here that know to explain it to me.
Why is it that when you travel outside Nigeria, you HAVE to prefix most
phone numbers with a "0" after the country code when dialing? When you
are inside the country dialing, the "0" does not matter.

Is there some technical reason for this? Does this happen when dialing to/in
other countries?

Cheers!

GFX

When you're dialling a number internationally, you have to remove the preceding zero after putting the country prefix. I believe this is an international standard or something. You could search for more info on this.

As for dialling a number in the same country, yes the zero is necessary.

Hello My People,

Sorry, I forgot to mention in my post on this thread that the problem is
specific to dialing Nigerian phone numbers. The problem of
"to add zero or not to add zero" does not happen in other places
I know of.

In other places, when people give you their phone
number, you dial the same number whether or not you are inside
or outside the country. There is no "add zero" or "don't add zero"
problem.

I suspect there is something the telecom implementors in Nigeria are
not (have not been) doing right. I'm surprised people have not been
complaining about it.

Cheers,

GFX

Anyways that has got to do with roaming and international dialling codes.

Excluding the zero prefix when dialling international and including it when dialling locally is an international convention implemented all over the world.  The way to get round it is to always store all your numbers in international format so for example the following VMobile number 08021234567 should be stored as +2348021234567. That way you don't have to worry about including or excluding the zero prefix. I should also add that dialling a local number in international format will still be charged at local rates.