A while back, I was in charge of setting up a new Allworx 6x at our small Netherlands office. Our department ordered the 6x and I did as much configuration as possible. I configured the outside lines, auto attendants and dial plans. Once it was ready we shipped it overseas and waited for them to receive it. This is my struggle of learning about Netherlands phone numbers and NANPA.
troubleshooting the allworx
After a week or so our guys in the Netherlands office had the new PBX! I worked with their phone provider to connect the lines to the right ports. Everything seemed to be working. We could call internally after configuring multi-site and adding their new box to the site controller. They could also receive calls! However, the next day we found that the couldn’t dial out. Well, they could call specific countries only but not Netherlands. It is a bit tough to communicate and troubleshoot with them. So, I connected a phone here and set their Allworx 6x IP as the boot servers IP and added the phone to their phone system. After attempting to dial I noticed it was being cut off or not executed based on the numbers input. It was an immediate assumption this issue was being caused by the dialing plans. This part was tricky for me not being a phone expert and not being used to Netherlands # format. But, it was time to play with their dial plans. While trying to figure out their phone number format I found this neat site. It gives you country codes and area codes, which proved helpful.
I used this information to test several different outputs on the “automatic route selection”. This is a setting that allows you to dial a local area code without dialing the actual area code. Here is an example:
The screenshot shows if there are no specific leading digits and the total number of digits dialed is 7 then it inserts 1+813. This is what makes things easier for us! After studying for awhile and creating several dialing rules with the correct format for Netherlands I thought my task was complete. I had created “automatic route selection” rules for local and long distance! However, the next morning I found that it was still not working. This led me back to adjusting settings and researching. Eventually is stumbled upon the answer.
NANPA
The North American Numbering Plan Administration was surprisingly new to me. Being so used to setting up phone systems in America it is something I never needed to know. NANPA is a standard for dialing in North American countries that restricts numbers to 10 digits. A majority of Netherlands phone numbers only have a 2 digit area code. This made the number fall short of NANPA’s 10 digit rule. This is also why they could call some countries because those locations had 10 digit numbers. I probably overlooked this setting several times but once I disabled it everything worked. They could call everywhere and the dialing plan I created worked properly!
celebrate
It was fixed. Finally! I no longer had to struggle troubleshooting a device remotely with people who don’t natively speak English. Again, most fixes are usually right under your nose. This is another instance of trying to troubleshoot the more technical aspect of something while looking beyond the simple fix. But everyone is happy now. Time to celebrate.