General question to long distance calls

Hi all,

I am German, but I run now a Asterisk based phone system in our officees in Canada and the US. Now I have problems to understand the signaling of the number at incomming calls.

When I call my phone system in Canada from Germany I get 01149 89 312 22 11 as incomming number. So I just add a 9 in front to get an outside line and I can call the number back immediatly.

When I call from inside the US I allways get just the 10 digit number (e.g. 832 554 1234) as incomming number no matter, if the caller called from outside my area (and I have to add a 1 in front to call him back) or if it is a local call to call this number back.

How do you guys solve this problem in the US. We have one system in Houston/TX, which has 281, 713 and 832 as area codes. The other is in Sarnia/ON which has 519 as area code. But 519 covers most of South Western Ontario (with overlaying area code 226), so most calls will be long distance calls.

Is there something wrong in the setup of my Asterisk system or will the 1 never be signaled in the US?

Thank you for your help

The type of number you get will depend on lots of variables. I don’t think you can say that it just depends on the country. In your example you seem to be getting ISDN unknown format from Germany and ISDN national format within the North American Numbering Plan area. If you actually have a direct ISDN connection to the PSTN, CALLERID(ton) should tell you which format applies to the number. If you are going through a “SIP provider” they may have lost the type of number information.

I think you may be using an Asterisk GUI, in which case detailed configuration questions should be addressed to a forum for that GUI.

If you have ISDN using Digium cards, have a look at the first sticky posting on the Asterisk Support forum.

Note that 9 for outgoing access is not a universal convention. Once you have identified the format properly, Asterisk can rewrite the CLI so that internal phones already have that digit prefixed.

One other thing to consider, is that in the USA, and probably the whole NANP, the 1 prefix is more specific than long distance. It is “long distance using my default long distance operator”. (It is not a country code.)