The “+” symbol in mobile communications serves as a prefix to indicate that a phone number includes a country code (e.g., +3804412345). This helps to avoid confusion with numbers that could be interpreted in a local dialing format (e.g., 380-441-2345 would be a phone number in Columbus, OH). However, the E.164 standard, which specifies that phone numbers start with a country code followed by the area code (e.g., 38044 for Ukraine, Kyiv) and is commonly used in PortaSwitch, requires digits only, without the “+” at the beginning.
Your admins don’t need to manually configure number translation rules to remove the “+” symbol. PortaSwitch automatically removes it from both caller and called (destination) numbers, ensuring correct number matching in tariffs, call barring, call screening, CLI validation, and other features.
Say a service provider Owl Telecom prohibits the routing of calls with invalid CLI to the vendor GlobalNet to avoid surcharges that GlobalNet imposes on such calls. Owl Telecom configures the system to route only calls with a valid CLI that follows the E.164 standard.
When a customer’s on-premise PBX sends the number “+27134567890,” PortaSwitch applies a built-in translation rule that removes the “+” symbol and then matches the resulting number against the CLI validation rule. Since “27134567890” is a valid E.164 phone number, the call is successfully routed.
- No manual actions are needed to prevent mismatches caused by the “+” prefix.
Specifics
- When adding number patterns for call barring or call screening, customers can choose to include or exclude the “+” at the beginning. In either case, only the digits will be used when matching a phone number against the pattern.
- If a service provider specifies a number with “+” to override the customer’s caller identity on the web interface and the identity gets overridden, it will still contain “+”. As a result, in example 2, such a call will not be sent to the vendor GlobalNet, because the identity is not an E.164-compliant number and fails validation.
