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October 11, 2005 4:15 PM

What is the shortest possible phone number in the world?

... including country and area code.

posted by o0o0o to Travel & Transportation (22 answers total)

+1 911
posted by riffola at 4:32 PM on October 11, 2005

This is just my experience from travelling, but I stayed at a hotel in a Bolivian village where the entire phone number was seven digits.

three digits for the country code
one digit for the area code
one digit for the local exchange
two digits for the actual phone
posted by luneray at 4:34 PM on October 11, 2005

Does 0 (for the operator) even have a country and area code?

Anyway, I'd guess any American or Canadian phone number, discounting riffola's 911 (and 411, etc.).
posted by Kickstart70 at 4:35 PM on October 11, 2005

When I lived in the cook islands, all phone numbers were five digits long. Country code 682. No area code. That makes 8 total. I think that's probably hard to beat, after all, the country had only ~13k people. I'm sure there are shorter ones on a local level, but I've never seen an entire nation where no phone numbers were longer than 8 digits.
posted by allen.spaulding at 4:36 PM on October 11, 2005

luneray: that likely wasn't their whole phone number, just a shortcut within their calling area. Could you dial that from where you are now and reach the village?

When I was growing up, my phone number (locally) was 4 digits.
posted by Kickstart70 at 4:37 PM on October 11, 2005

Response by poster: Ok, let me clarify:

No specialty numbers. I'm looking for shortest possible phone number that you could expect to have as a home phone number.

I'm under the presumption that there has to be a country out there with incredibly short phone numbers.

On preview: Cook Islands is in the lead ...
posted by o0o0o at 4:37 PM on October 11, 2005

Best answer: Ok, I might have to retract. Niue has country code 683 and I remember calling there and being shocked that there were only four digits in each number. They have about 1/10 the population of the Cooks, so it makes sense. I'd put good money on Niue, I think everything on the island is 7 digits long.
posted by allen.spaulding at 4:41 PM on October 11, 2005

Best answer: World Telephone Numbering Guide

From that, St. Helena (290), Ascension (247), and Niue Island (683) use 4-digit numbers and no area codes. There may be more, I got tired of looking. St. Helena used to use 3-digit numbers but I guess they ran out. A couple of others used to use 4-digit numbers but they moved to 7-digit ones to be practical.

(You know there are no google results for "shortest telephone number"?)
posted by smackfu at 4:44 PM on October 11, 2005

Antarctica has +672 XX XXX
posted by riffola at 4:45 PM on October 11, 2005

North Korea is short like that, too.
posted by johngoren at 6:09 PM on October 11, 2005

Response by poster: smackfu: You know there are no google results for "shortest telephone number"?


That's what lead me to ask. Hopefully Google and the other search engines pick this thread up.


Thanks!
posted by o0o0o at 6:19 PM on October 11, 2005

Would +1 911 get me a long-distance dispatch office? 'cause normally, I should think 911 alone would do the trick.
posted by five fresh fish at 6:33 PM on October 11, 2005

"What is the shortest phone number in the world?"

From the rest of the comments, I assume you mean including the country code, but wouldn't that only be used if you were calling from outside that country? Depending on why you want to know, you might want to leave off the country codes. Wouldn't that make each number 3 digits shorter? (So, the same effect on any number, but the shortest overall would then be even shorter.) I consider my (US) phone number to be area code, prefix, and "last four" (exchange?) - I would never include the country code. Then again, I've never given my phone number to anyone outside the US...
posted by attercoppe at 6:56 PM on October 11, 2005

When I lived in England from 1976-79, our home phone number was "307." Bentwaters 307, to be precise.
posted by davidmsc at 8:34 PM on October 11, 2005

That would be the phone number of someone to whom you owe money, you dial the first two digits and they pick up. (apologies Flip)
posted by leafwoman at 9:26 PM on October 11, 2005

When I was a yewt, living in rural MN, 'round 1987, the town that I was in had 5 digit dialing. Technically you could have dialed all seven (like 789-1234), but you only needed to dial the last digit of the prefix to call intra-town (9-1234).
posted by unixrat at 9:28 PM on October 11, 2005

Tokalau: 1-digit area code + 3-digit subscriber number. The three atolls have populations between 400-600, so if want to call someone else on the same atoll, it's three digits.
posted by holgate at 7:37 AM on October 12, 2005

And with Tokalau, a full international number is +690-x-xxx.
posted by holgate at 7:39 AM on October 12, 2005

Based on small population = short phone number... Vatican? Saint Helena? Montserrat?
posted by Leon at 7:42 AM on October 12, 2005

I used to be ... Hemswell 369.
That was back in 1987
posted by seanyboy at 7:57 AM on October 12, 2005

Kickstart, I'm not sure if I could have dialled that number directly from the US. At the time, Bolivia didn't have direct dialling for international or long distance calls. Although when I called the hotel long distance from within the country (using the operator), I gave her the four digit number and I got through. I didn't have to explain what part of the country it was in.
posted by luneray at 9:16 AM on October 12, 2005

I'm gonna say that numbers such as Bentwaters 307 and Hemswell 369 don't count as three digits. Sure, it's only three numerical digits, but the word in front is part of the number too. Don't know about England, but here in the states the word preceding the numbers eventually became the prefix. (i.e. Pennsylvania 6-5000 was actually PEnnsylvania 6-5000; the PE translated into 73 - just as with phone pads today - and the number was actually 736-5000. Using the word instead of the numbers began to decline and at some point went away altogether.)
posted by attercoppe at 9:22 PM on October 12, 2005