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Fax explained

Sending a fax abroad: dialling right, and choosing who carries it

Two questions arise, and they are routinely conflated. Knowing how to dial a foreign number tells you nothing about whether a service can reach it: the two are independent problems.

Short answer

An international number is made of the exit prefix, the country code, then the national number stripped of its trunk prefix — Italy being the exception that keeps it. That leaves the second question, the only one that decides whether the fax arrives: does the service you use serve that country. This one does not; its form accepts French numbers only.

Dialling a foreign number, in three parts

  1. 1

    The exit prefix

    00 from Europe, 011 from North America. It tells the network the call is leaving the national plan. The “+” form replaces it everywhere and is what belongs in an address book.

  2. 2

    The country code

    One to three digits, assigned by the ITU in recommendation E.164. The sixty codes documented here are published as an open file, free to reuse.

  3. 3

    The national number, without its trunk prefix

    The leading “0” of French, British or German numbers disappears when dialling internationally. Italy is the notable exception: it keeps it, and omitting it makes the call fail.

Dialling right is not enough

A correctly formed number only connects if the sender has a routing agreement for that country. Fax termination abroad is billed per page, which a free service cannot absorb without something in return. That is why this site stays with France: its form accepts only ten-digit numbers beginning 01 to 05 or 09, and the country pages published here document numbering without announcing coverage.

Frequently asked questions

Can this site send a fax abroad?
No. The form accepts only French ten-digit numbers beginning 01, 02, 03, 04, 05 or 09. A foreign number is rejected at entry, with nothing sent and nothing charged.
What are the country pages and dialling codes for, then?
For dialling correctly from a fax machine or another service. They document the country code, the expected format and local fax usage — reference data, published as an open file, independent of what this site transmits.
How do you pick a service that serves a given country?
By checking its destination list before sending, not its sales copy: “international” often means a short list. The transmission report remains the only evidence that a fax arrived, whichever provider is used.

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