Telephone numbers in Ukraine

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Country Code: 380
International Call Prefix: 8~10

Ukraine (similarly to most of ex-Soviet Union countries) employs a four-level (local, zone, country, international) open dialing plan. For all non-local numbers, the required trunk prefix is '8' followed by an auxiliary dial tone after it (optional on digital exchanges), with the following '2' for in-zone calls, '0' for in-country calls to geographical and cell phone zones, none to toll-free, premium-rate and other special zones (e.g. 800, 900, 703, 711), and '10' for international calls.

The in-country sequence for ordinary zones consists of a 2 digit zone code, an optional subzone code (never used for the capital of the geographic region corresponding to a phone zone), an optional filler (0 to 2 "2"s, used to make the whole in-country sequence contain exactly 9 digits) and the local phone number (5 to 7 digits). Mainly for historical reasons, zone codes are very often named with a leading '0', e.g. 044 instead of 44. When dialing from cell phones, the in-country dial sequence (with 80 prefix) is used even for phones of the same provider. Otherwise a call may be placed in the nearest geographic area.

Geographical zones correspond to geographic regions ("oblasti") with exception of Sevastopol which utilizes its own phone zone.

Cell phone numbers can be assigned both within the cell phone provider zone and within a geographic zone. The latter arrangement is used mainly for CDMA phones and for GSM operators selling their connectivity within one city, like GoldenTelecom GSM. Allocation of new GSM cell phone numbers within a geographic zone is very rare now because law requires all incoming calls to be free, including incoming calls to a cell phone.

Some examples of dialed sequences:

xxx-xx-xx          (two PSTN phones within Kiev, local number is 7 digits long)
x-xx-xx            (two PSTN phones inside Brovary, city in Kiev phone zone, local
                    number is 5 digits long)
8~294 x-xx-xx      (from Kiev fixed line to Brovary PSTN phone, the same zone, 
                    different subzone; subzone code is 94)
8~2 xxx-xx-xx      (from Brovary fixed line to Kiev PSTN phone, the same zone, 
                    different subzone, empty subzone code)
8~050 xxx-xx-xx    (from any Ukraine mobile not roaming or PSTN phone to 
                    UMC, cell phone provider)
8~067 xxx-xx-xx    (from any Ukraine mobile not roaming or PSTN phone to 
                    Kyivstar, cell phone provider)
8~800 xxx-xx-xx    (from any Ukraine mobile not roaming or PSTN phone to toll-free number)
8~044 xxx-xx-xx    (from any Ukraine mobile not roaming or PSTN phone outside Kiev 
                    phone zone to Kiev)
8~044 94x-xx-xx    (from any Ukraine mobile not roaming or PSTN phone outside of
                    Kiev phone zone to Brovary)
8~046 xxx-xx-xx    (from any Ukraine mobile nor roaming or PSTN phone outside of 
                    Chernihiv phone zone to Chernihiv)
8~032 2xx-xx-xx    (from any Ukraine mobile nor roaming or PSTN phone outside of 
                    Lviv phone zone to Lviv; the local number is 6 digits long, 
                    so "2" is used as a filler to make the whole in-country dial sequence 
                    9 digits long)
+380 44 xxx-xx-xx  (mobile international call to Kiev zone or Kiev itself)
+380 44 94x-xx-xx  (mobile international call to Brovary)
+380 48 xxx-xx-xx  (mobile international call to Odessa)
+380 48 2xx-xx-xx  (mobile international call to 6-digits numbers of Odessa)
+380 32 2xx-xx-xx  (mobile international call to Lviv)
+380 50 xxx-xx-xx  (mobile international call to UMC)
+380 67 xxx-xx-xx  (mobile international call to Kyivstar)
+380 63 xxx-xx-xx  (mobile international call to life)
8~10 ...  (mobile or fixed international call from Ukraine)

(In the table, tilde sign ('~') means waiting for secondary dial tone.)

Some mobile operators may support additional dialing plans. For example, Kyivstar also supports the following:

xxx-xx-xx          (local number at current location of KyivStar mobile - i.e. if the 
                    mobile is currently in Kiev this will represent a Kiev number)
67-xxx-xx-xx       (call from KyivStar subscriber to KyivStar subscriber)

Note that law explicitly prohibits trunk calls to a PSTN phone within the same local area in a geographic phone zone (e.g. from Kiev to Kiev), so one cannot dial 8~2 or 8~0xx for this, unless the phone exchange is misconfigured or a special circumstance occurs.