NCC develops national numbering plan for telephone networks

The Nigerian Communication Commission (NCC) says it has developed National Numbering Plan (NNP) to set up uniform numbering scheme for easy calls to subscribers and operators.

The NCC made this known in a statement on its website on Friday in Abuja.

It said the NNP would provide a uniform dialing procedure for local, national long distance, international calls and calls to emergency, special services, independent of where the call was originating from in the country.

According to the NCC, other numbering information includes, terminologies, dialing procedure, area codes by zone and primary centre and mobile telephony number allocation.

It said that some of its terminologies are numbering area, trunk prefix, trunk code, directory number and international prefix, among others.

“Numbering area is part of the country to which a trunk code has been allocated and within that area only the directory numbers are dialed.

“Trunk prefix is the digit or a combination of digits to be dialed by a calling subscriber so as to obtain access to a trunk code and the numbering area.”

The commission said that the international prefix was the number dialed after the international prefix.

According to it, the international number consists of the country code of the required country followed by the national number of the called subscriber.

NCC said that it was charged with development of the NNP for the Nigerian telephone networks both for fixed and wireless networks.

“This is to ensure allocation of unique numbers to each subscriber connected to the network.’’