telephone number A telephone number is a sequence of digits assigned to a landline telephone subscriber station connected to a telephone line or to a wireless electronic telephony device, such as a radio telephone or a mobile telephone, or to other devices f ...

Belgium Belgium, ; french: Belgique ; german: Belgien officially the Kingdom of Belgium, is a country in Northwestern Europe. The country is bordered by the Netherlands to the north, Germany to the east, Luxembourg to the southeast, France to th ...

is a sequence of nine or ten digits dialed on a telephone to make a call on the Belgian telephone network. Belgium is under a full number dialing plan, meaning that the full national number must be dialed for all calls, while it retains the trunk code, '0', for all national dialling. Exception: Some "special services" use 3 or 4 digits with no area or trunk codes: e.g.; 112 and 100 (fire brigade and ambulance); 101 (police); 1307 (info in French) or 1207 (info in Dutch), etc. "

112 112 may refer to: *112 (number), the natural number following 111 and preceding 113 *112 (band), an American R&B quartet from Atlanta, Georgia **112 (album), ''112'' (album), album from the band of the same name *112 (emergency telephone number), t ...

" is an emergency number for contacting the fire brigade, ambulance and police in all 27 countries of the European Union. Operators will help the caller in the country's native language, in English, or the language of any neighbouring country. Calls to this number for contacting the police are forwarded to "101", losing response time. The

telephone numbering plan A telephone numbering plan is a type of numbering scheme used in telecommunication to assign telephone number A telephone number is a sequence of digits assigned to a landline telephone subscriber station connected to a telephone line or ...

allows for numbers have varying lengths (9 digits for

landline A landline (land line, land-line, main line, home phone, fixed-line, and wireline) is a telephone connection that uses metal wires or optical fiber telephone line for transmission, as distinguished from a mobile cellular network, which uses ...

numbers, and 10 digits for mobile numbers).

Overview and structure

Area code A telephone numbering plan is a type of numbering scheme used in telecommunication to assign telephone numbers to subscriber telephones or other telephony endpoints. Telephone numbers are the addresses of participants in a telephone network, rea ...

s in Belgium are, excluding the leading '0', one or two digits long. Numbers are of variable length; landlines have a seven-digit subscriber number and a one-digit area code for large cities, while smaller cities have a six-digit subscriber number and a two-digit area code. All Belgian telephone numbers dialed within Belgium must use the leading '0' trunk code. Area codes are separated from the subscriber number by a slash and a space, and subscriber number digits are in the format xxx xx xx or xx xx xx (sometimes xxx xxx), depending on the length of the area code. See the table below for examples: Belgium 0x xxx xx xx - dialing a big city, such as

Brussels Brussels (french: Bruxelles or ; nl, Brussel ), officially the Brussels-Capital Region (All text and all but one graphic show the English name as Brussels-Capital Region.) (french: link=no, Région de Bruxelles-Capitale; nl, link=no, Bruss ...

Antwerp Antwerp (; nl, Antwerpen ; french: Anvers ; es, Amberes) is the largest city in Belgium by area at and the capital of Antwerp Province in the Flemish Region. With a population of 520,504,

, Liège and

Ghent Ghent ( nl, Gent ; french: Gand ; traditional English: Gaunt) is a city and a municipality in the Flemish Region of Belgium. It is the capital and largest city of the East Flanders province, and the third largest in the country, exceeded in ...

. 0xx xx xx xx - dialing a small city, such as

Kortrijk Kortrijk ( , ; vls, Kortryk or ''Kortrik''; french: Courtrai ; la, Cortoriacum), sometimes known in English as Courtrai or Courtray ( ), is a Belgian City status in Belgium, city and Municipalities in Belgium, municipality in the Flemish Regio ...

, Mons,

Ostend Ostend ( nl, Oostende, ; french: link=no, Ostende ; german: link=no, Ostende ; vls, Ostende) is a coastal city and municipality, located in the province of West Flanders in the Flemish Region of Belgium. It comprises the boroughs of Mariakerk ...

, Aalst or

Verviers Verviers (; wa, Vervî) is a city and municipality of Wallonia located in the province of Liège, Belgium. The municipality consists of the following districts: Ensival, Heusy, Lambermont, Petit-Rechain, Stembert, and Verviers. It is also ...

04xx xx xx xx - dialing a mobile number from a landline or another mobile phone. Remark that Liège shares the trunk number 04 for landlines with the mobile numbers prefix 046, 047, 048, or 049. But landlines in Liège do not start with those sequences. From outside Belgium, a caller would dial their international call prefix (typically 00 in

Europe Europe is a large peninsula conventionally considered a continent in its own right because of its great physical size and the weight of its history and traditions. Europe is also considered a Continent#Subcontinents, subcontinent of Eurasia ...

and 011 in

North America North America is a continent in the Northern Hemisphere and almost entirely within the Western Hemisphere. It is bordered to the north by the Arctic Ocean, to the east by the Atlantic Ocean, to the southeast by South America and the Car ...

), followed by 32 (the country code for Belgium), then the area code minus the trunk code '0', and finally the local number. Dialing from New York to Brussels 011-32-2-555-12-12 - Omitting the leading "0". Dialing from New York to Charleroi 011-32-71-123-456 - The subscriber number shortens with the addition of a number to the area code. Dialing from New York to a mobile number 011-32-4''x''x-12-34-56 - The dialer omits the leading "0". Mobile/GSM area codes always begin with 04xx and the subscriber number is six digits long. Numbers are usually provided by

Mobistar Orange Belgium (known as Orange) is a Belgian telecommunications company. It competes with Proximus and Base. It was incorporated by France Télécom in 1996 under the name of Mobistar. The company re-branded as Orange on 9 May 2016 (following ...

(re-branded as Orange), Base, or

Proximus Proximus (stylised as pro⌘imus; formerly known as Belgacom Mobile) is the largest of Belgium's three mobile telecommunications companies and is a part of Proximus Group (previously Belgacom Group). It competes with Orange Belgium and Base. ...

, and more recently by

Telenet Telenet was an American commercial packet-switched network which went into service in 1975. It was the first FCC-licensed public data network in the United States. Various commercial and government interests paid monthly fees for dedicated lines ...

as well. Each provider has a unique number assigned as the second digit in the area code: Proximus numbers begin with 047x or 0460, Base numbers with 048x, Orange numbers with 049x and Telenet numbers with 0467 and 0468. With the introduction of number portability, both for landlines and mobile numbers, area codes may no longer correspond with their original providers or local switches.

Area codes

Remark that landlines in Liège have numbers starting with 04, and so do mobile phones all over the country. But mobile numbers are 04xx xx xx xx – 10 digits in total – while Liège numbers are 04 xxx xx xx – 9 digits in total. Landlines in Liège also never starts with 04 6x, 04 7x, 04 8x or 04 9x.

Mobile numbers

Note that subscribers may have been ported to another network, due to

mobile number portability Mobile number portability (MNP) enables mobile telephone users to retain their mobile telephone numbers when changing from one mobile network carrier to another. General overview Mobile number portability is implemented in varying ways across ...

. On some mobile phones, the caller ID may fail unless the leading 0 is replaced with a + and the country code, i.e. a caller's number 0474/12.34.56 might need to be manually replaced to +32/474.12.34.56 in your phone. More ranges have become available between 0440 and 0468. For the latest list refer to the BIPT reference.

Non-geographic numbers

* 070: Premium pay rate services (€0.30/min.) * 077:

Machine to machine Machine to machine (M2M) is direct communication between devices using any communications channel, including wired and wireless. Machine to machine communication can include industrial instrumentation, enabling a sensor or meter to communicate th ...

communication * 078: National pay rate services. * 0800:

toll free A toll-free telephone number or freephone number is a telephone number that is billed for all arriving calls. For the calling party, a call to a toll-free number from a landline is free of charge. A toll-free number is identified by a dialing prefi ...

call rate services. * 090x - Premium pay rate numbers*: - 0900 (€0.50/min.). - 0901 (€50/min.). - 0902 (€1/min.). - 0903 (€1/min.). - 0904 (€2/min.). - 0905 (€2/call). - 0906 (€1/min.). - 0907 (€2/min.). - 0909 (€31/call). Number format: 07x/xxx.xxx 0800/xx.xxx 090x/xx.xxx Please do not confuse the 090 non-geographic number with the 09 city code of Ghent and the 070 non-geographic number with the 071 city code of Charleroi.

References

External links

Obtain the operator serving a dial number
DCCL, last updated 1 August 1999
Belgian Institute for Postal services and Telecommunication
{{Telephone numbers in Europe

Telephone numbers A telephone number is a sequence of digits assigned to a landline telephone subscriber station connected to a telephone line or to a wireless electronic telephony device, such as a radio telephone or a mobile telephone, or to other devices f ...

Telecommunications in Belgium