Global Phone:FAQ
Why is the response giving me a country abbreviation called “XV” or “XG”?
The International Organization for Standardization, or ISO, assigns each country a two letter code, known as the alpha-2 codes. For example, the United States ISO 3166 Alpha-2 code is US. Canada is CA. Germany is DE. This is what fills the CountryAbbreviation response for our GlobalPhone service.
Their prominent use is for top level domains (.us, .uk, .de), but these codes are not always assigned on a country-to-country basis. Organizations can use an ISO3166 Alpha-2 code; for example, the European Patent Organization, uses the alpha-2 code EP (1).
In this case, alpha-2 code XV, falls under "User-assigned code elements" from codes XA to XZ, QM-QZ, and AA. For these assignments, Countries or organizations can request to use these codes for their own use; for example, the Unicode CLDR project took QO to represent Oceania . (2).
For XV in particular, it is in use for a code representing multiple countries. Example uses:
- BaFin (German Federal Financial Supervisory Authority) used XV for defining assets found in multiple countries.
- ITU (Internation Telecommunications Union) assigned country dialing codes +882 and +883 to the alpha-2 code XV, to represent services that are not dedicated for a single country. (3)
XG is part of the User Assigned Code Elements in the ISO 3166 Alpha-2 standard - similar to XV
Also similar to XV (+882/+883), XG (+881) covers multiple countries but the difference is that the service is used for satellite systems.
Here are some resources to learn more about ISO 3166’s Alpha-2 standards:
- (1) - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_3166-1_alpha-2#Codes_currently_agreed_not_to_use
- (2) - https://www.drupal.org/node/1157504
- (3) - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Networks_(country_code)
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_Mobile_Satellite_System (article on the +881/XG country code)
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_country_calling_codes (article on what country codes belong to which calling codes)
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_3166-1_alpha-2#User-assigned_code_elements (article on the alpha-2 User assigned code elements)
What are the valid inputs for the Global Phone’s Lookup method?
The Lookup method can take in a phone number, a country name or ISO2 code, and a country of origin’s name or ISO2 code.
The phone number can be inserted in the local or international format.
The phone country and the country of origin can take in the official country name or the ISO2 code for that region.
| Territory Name | Territory’s ISO2 Code | Country it falls in | Reassigned ISO2 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Åland Islands | AX | Finland | FI |
| Bouvet Island | BV | Norway | NO |
| Cocos (Keeling) Islands | CC | Australia | AU |
| Christmas Island | CX | Australia | AU |
| Western Sahara | EH | Morocco | MA |
| South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands | GS | Great Britian / United Kingdom | GB |
| Heard Island and McDonald Islands | HM | Australia | AU |
| Pitcairn | PN | Great Britian / United Kingdom | GB |
| Svalbard and Jan Mayen | SJ | Norway | NO |
| French Southern Territories | TF | FR | FR |
| United States Minor Outlying Islands | UM | United States | US |
| Vatican City / Holy See | VA | Italy | IT |