For those who give phone calls to France, there was on Oct 18th 1996 a
general change in the phone numbers in France (numbers rising from 8 to
9 or 10 digits).

Without going into details, please note :

1) If you call from outside France, you have to dial 9 digits after the
   France country code, which is 33.

   = Nothing is changed for Paris and adjacent area : you dial 33 (code
     for France) 1 (code for Paris and area) and the usual 8 digits
     number of your correspondant

   = For areas outside the Parisian area (roughly more than 30 miles
     from Paris),  add before the 8 digits number of your correspondant :

        2 for NW France
        3 for NE France
        4 for SE France
        5 for SW France

2) If you call from within France, from now on, you will always have to
   dial 10 digits : add 01, 02, 03, 04 or 05 as specified above before
   the usual old 8 digits number of your correspondant.

You may too look at the France Telecom site :

    http://www.francetelecom.fr

(But you need to have a color screen, otherwise, all the information is in
black on black !!! That is high technology).

If you get any difficulty joining your usual correspondant in France, I
might help the members of the MMD finding the right number if you e-mail
me. (I do not expect there will be thousands of e-mails for that ...).

Best regards,

Philippe Rouille¶
rouille@cnam.fr