Telephone numbers in Italy are managed by the Autorità per le Garanzie nelle Comunicazioni, a national regulatory authority for the communication industry located in Rome. Telephone numbers are defined by an open telephone numbering plan that assigns subscriber telephone numbers of six to eleven digits. In addition, other short codes are used for special services. The plan is organized by types of services, indicated by the first digit. Geographic landline numbers start with the digit 0, while mobile telephone numbers start with 3. Four types of emergency services use three-digit telephone numbers in the group 11X, including 112 for the Carabinieri. Other initial digits denote other services, such as toll-free numbers. The dialing procedures for callers mandate that the full telephone number is always dialed, including the area code, which is called prefix. The country code for calling Italy from abroad is 39. For calling foreign destinations from Italy, the international call prefix is 00, as is standard in most European countries. The regulations for Italian telephone numbers prescribe no fixed rules for grouping the digits for printing or display. Nevertheless, various grouping schemes are commonly used and a telephone number is likely to be written or pronounced differently by different people. Commonly used formatting or punctuation characters include the space character, the dot, full stop, and the hyphen.
Number format
The minimum length of telephone numbers is three digits and the maximum is twelve.
Landline service
Landline numbers start with the digit 0 and are 6 to 11 digits long, although they are rarely shorter than 9. They are composed of a variable length prefix followed by a variable length subscriber number. Prefixes are assigned on a geographical basis, starting from the north of the country; for example: Rome has prefix "06", Milan has "02", Naples has "081", and Turin has "011".
Mobile telephone service
Mobile telephone numbers start with the digit 3 and are generally ten digits long. It is still possible, but rare, to find nine-digit numbers, which were the first to be assigned. The group of the first three digits of a mobile telephone number identifies the mobile network operator that assigned the number, but since 2002, mobile number portability is possible and thus any number can end up being managed by any carrier. Some network operators allow the caller to insert additional digits for redirecting calls to voice mail. For example, dialing, "363397308986" might connect to the voice mail service of the telephone number "3397308986". The extra digits vary based on the network operator managing the service.
Emergency and service numbers
Emergency and service numbers start with the digit 1. Four emergency numbers are currently in use, but a process has been started to consolidate them with 112, previously assigned to the gendarmerie, already the unique emergency number in some areas. Calls to 112 are answered within seconds and in multiple languages. The complete list of emergency numbers is:
"112": Gendarmerie
"113": State Police
"114": Helpline for children, handled by "SOS Il Telefono Azzurro Onlus"
"19696": Helpline for children, handled by "SOS Il Telefono Azzurro Onlus";
Special-rate numbers
Special-rate numbers start with 8 and include toll-free numbers, shared-rate numbers and premium-rate services.
Other numbers
Numbers starting with 4 are used for network-specific phone services like voice mailbox and various information services; they can be free, non-premium or premium. Included in this category are, among others:
"40...": free operator internal services;
"455...": fundraising services for social purposes by non-profit agencies, organizations and associations and government;
In the past it was possible to omit the prefix when calling from a landline to another landline in the same area. The digit "0" was the trunk code and it had to be removed when calling from abroad. This changed in 1998, with a transition period lasting from 19 June to 31 December. The new dialing procedures require dialing the full number for all calls. The main advantage is the availability of millions of previously reserved phone numbers. The change was widely advertised with a campaign named "Fissa il prefisso". It was originally intended to replace the leading 0 with 4 for landlines. This was scheduled for implementation commencing 29 December 2000, but never happened. Instead, 4 was assigned to identify network services. Example for calling the landline subscriber number xxxxxxxx in Rome:
xxxxxxxx: from within Rome, before 1998;
: from within Rome, after 1998;
: from outside Rome, both before and after 1998;
: from abroad, before 1998;
: from abroad, after 1998.
Mobile numbers prefix shortening
Until 2001 a leading "0" was part of any mobile phone number, but it has been removed. Example for calling the mobile phone number :
: from within Italy, before 2001;
: from within Italy, after 2001;
: from abroad, both before and after 2001.
Other changes
Several other smaller changes occurred during the years: for example the prefix for toll free numbers changed from "167" to "800" in 1999.
The Italian municipality Campione d'Italia, an exclave within the Swiss canton of Ticino, uses the Swiss telephone network and is part of the Swiss numbering plan, with local numbers using the +41 91 numbering range, although some Italian numbers are in use by the municipal council, which use the same +39 031 numbering range as the town of Como.
The Italian enclave San Marino has its own country code378, but landline numbers can be reached using the Italian country code as well: the prefix "0549" is assigned to San Marino. Dialing either "+378xxxxxx" or "+390549xxxxxx" will reach the same number. Mobile phone customers are sometimes assigned Italian phone numbers.
The country code 379 is assigned to Vatican City, but it is not used: telephone numbers in Vatican City are integrated into the Italian numbering plan. Vatican landline telephone numbers are in the form "+3906698xxxxx", "+39" being the country code for Italy and "06" the prefix for Rome.
