Phone Number Format in Japan

Question

Level 1

4 points

Phone Number Format in Japan

Here is a question for all of us, using an iPhone with Softbank in Japan.
For those who have a lot of friends overseas in their address book.
And who travel often from Japan to overseas.

If you call from Japan to overseas, you have to add 010 instead of "+" in front of the country code.
(If you send SMS to overseas you keep "+").
If you call an international number from outside of the Japan, you have to do it with the "+".

In my current Nokia there is a function, called "replace international prefix". So when I am in Japan, i switch it on, and all "+" will be automatically replaced with 010. If I am out of Japan I switch it off.
And it called normally starting with the "+".

Is there anything similar in the iPhone, or do we need to store all phone numbers with two formats in the address book?

MacBook Air, Mac OS X (10.5.4)

Posted on Jul 19, 2008 5:38 PM

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Answer 1

cbriere

Level 1

8 points

Jul 25, 2008 10:05 PM in response to japanik

The problem comes from the Softbank network which does support the " + " but this function is deactivated because older keitais do not support using the "+".
They came up with this "solution", i.e. have the phones carry a list of "translated" international dialling codes, that is, substitute the "+" by "010".
Unfortunately, there is no such setting (that I know of, and I've pretty much looked everywhere) on the iPhone 3G (or most recent internationally available phones).

My workaround for now is to create in my contacts a second entry for phone numbers with the "+" and use that when i'm outside Japan. When in Japan, I use the default entry that is formatted with the 010.

example :
mobile : 010 12 34 5678 9012
mobile 2 : +12 34 5678 9012

It *****, I know..

Message was edited by: cbriere

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Answer 2

RR

Level 1

115 points

Aug 15, 2008 11:54 PM in response to cbriere

Yes, very annoying indeed but I have another Softbank phone, a Nokia N73, and there is a setting there to replace + by 010 so this issue must be exclusive to the iPhone Softbank implementation. If they can do it for the other handsets, they should be able to do it for the iPhone. Hope they fix this quick as it is a pain to have to edit or add an additional number just to dial from Japan. Most of my contacts are also abroad.

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Answer 3

Tad67

Level 1

0 points

Aug 16, 2008 10:43 PM in response to RR

I found the problem when I went on a biz trip only days after I picked up my iPhone 3G, hoping that the "Kokusai Dial Assist" would appear once I was outside of Japan...Not.

I had a Docomo and all the numbers in the contacts were local numbers. When I made the call, I had the choice of adding country code (the menu was a list of countries which you could scroll).

Softbank making "+" available could solve the problem, but, I wonder whether we get the correct caller name if the caller had the number 090-xxxx-yyyy and my contacts/addressbook had the entry +81-90-xxxx-yyyy.

My preference would be having the option to add "+countrycode" at the time of calling and the phone deal with removing the leading "0" from the local numbers.

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Answer 4

irvjohn

Level 1

0 points

Aug 27, 2008 2:35 PM in response to japanik

We have the exact same problem in canada, my iphone from Rogers does not have the international assist function. I visited the Apple store in Boston and the person at h genius bar showed me the function on an ATT phone. Absolutley a must. When I was in Dublin last week, i could not make any international calls without editing the contacts. Not an issue with my blackberry, problem need to be fixed

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