Talk:Mobile country code

Rules that apply for the article

The article is meant to be suitable for parsing by machine, and should adhere to some strict rules.

There is one chapter per country. The chapter consists of a table according to this layout:

MCC	MNC	Brand	Operator	Status	Bands (MHz)	References and notes
000	00	Brand	Operator full name	Operational	GSM 900 / GSM 1800	Comments goes here

The columns are:

• MCC and MNC in numerical order.
• Brand is currently used commerical brand name.
• Operator is company full name. Operator's previous names and its shareholders we can write in details in this operator's own wiki-linked article, or to a very limited degree in the notes column.
• Status Only one of these:
  • Reserved: allocated by the relevant regulatory body, but not yet in use
  • Operational: allocated by the relevant regulatory body, and in use today
  • Not operational: allocated by the relevant regulatory body, but no longer in use
  • Unknown
• Bands (MHz) contains a list of pairs, separated by slashes. The first part is the technology (GSM, UMTS etc) the second is the frequency band (900, 1800, 1900 etc)
• References and notes has place for short notes and also references.

NOTE: Please update and clarify the above rules as appropriate

Recent changes and updates

---

I want to inform you that I have changed the structure of article MNC. Now it looks different to that it was before today. So what I have done? First of all I removed table of contest which I think was too large. The list of more than 200 countries was inconvenient and I changed the TOC limits to 2. For the countries list I applied compact table of contest with links only to the first letter of the country. Hope it will not make article worse. Second, the table width was enlarged to 100%. We don't need to loose 5% for the blank page. The free space is important. Now the table looks like that

MCC	MNC	Operator	Operational Status	Technology and Frequency (MHz)
000	00	Operator name	Operational	GSM 900

It will reduce the double-line cells and (as I know lots of you are printing this page) will be more readable when printing on A4-size paper.

So I tried to do everything to be better than it was and to make our article easier for future updates.

And now the most important thing. It is about updating the article and changing the information of it.

Country or territory name

All the list of countries is taken from the UN list. If the country is not oficially independent and recognized by other countries in brackets is written which country it is part of. For example today one person created for Kosovo separate headline. I changed it to Kosovo (Serbia). So please, no political disputes here.

MCC

It is clear. We are writing mobile country codes. In case if country has two or more this codes we are writing it in increasing order.

MNC

The same in increasing order. If you don't know operator's MNC put "?" sign and write the line in the end of country's list of operators.

Operator

I suggest us to write only operator's name - name under which it is providing its services (brand). Most of us need new information about it. But operator's previous names and its shareholders we can write in details in this operator's own article. E.g. Orange Moldova S.A. / Voxtel (France Telecom) - we write Orange and put a link to Orange Moldova page. Don't forget that our article is called MNC and we should focus on it rather than on shareholders etc. Especially, in most of cases operator has more than one shareholder.

Operational Status

Only three:

• Operational
• Not operational
• Unknown

No more information or explanations what had happened with its MNC and so on. I repeat our article is called MNC, and all explanation purposes and history of operator you can write in corresponding article.

Technology and Frequency (MHz)

I thought it was clear, but as I see it is not. So before writing something please read List of mobile phone standards article. First write standard, then frequency of this standard (e.g. ST1 FR1 / ST2 FR2).

Thanks everybody for future improvements of the article. I hope you will appreciate my work. Waiting for your comments and opinion.--Dima1 (talk) 21:53, 23 January 2008 (UTC)

---

How you can help

For those who would like to contribute to this page, please:

• Link to operators (see machine readability, below)
• Verify the data
• Check for omissions
• Hunt around for the operators' operating statuses and frequencies
• Update your cell provider's wikidata item by adding machine-readable [MCC] and [MNC] tags to improve automatic list generation

Table formatting

Table example:

MCC	MNC	Operator	Operational Status	Technology and Frequency (MHz)
000	00	Operator name	Operational	GSM 900

Operator names

The following convention should be used for the operator's name:

Currently used brand / previously used brands (Owning company)

e.g.:

3 / Orange (Hutchison 3G)

Operational status

Please use ONLY the following operational statuses:

• Reserved: allocated by the relevant regulatory body, but not yet in use
• Operational: allocated by the relevant regulatory body, and in use today
• Not operational: allocated by the relevant regulatory body, but no longer in use

In all other cases write Unknown.

Technology

Please enter the technology and licensed frequencies in use, separated with slash (/). Do not append "MHz", this is in the table column header. If the frequency or frequencies are not known, use "Unknown"

e.g. CDMA 450 / GSM 800 / GSM 1900 / UMTS 2100 etc.

Machine readability

Please ensure that the table remains machine-readable where possible, so that applications may easily import the table. Hyperlinks should be used only to the operators' Wikipedia's page. Please do NOT use footnotes or add other data to the table, instead putting the additional information on the operator's Wikipedia page.

Longevity

Please DO NOT REMOVE ENTRIES unless the relevant regulatory body has NOT allocated this tuple.

Discussion

External links

• I am strongly against external links, so please keep links limited to Wiki-links. I have removed the few UK links that were there already. -- Egil 17:43, 24 July 2007 (UTC)
• Agreed - changes made in instructions above. David n m bond 17:59, 27 July 2007 (UTC)

Technology type

• Should there not also be an entry that shows what type of technology? I.e GSM, CDMA, iDEN etc. There are traces of this already in "Frequency", maybe we could add it there? -- Egil 17:41, 24 July 2007 (UTC)
• I'd be happy for the "frequency" field to change to a "technology" field. That makes more sense anyway, as there is insufficient information available currently. I will make the changes now. I've also updated the instructions above. David n m bond 17:59, 27 July 2007 (UTC)
• It should be clarified what we want to put here, e.g. CDMA vs CDMA2000. Dima1 changed CDMA2000 to CDMA in some places but not in others. The List of mobile phone standards calls it CDMA2000 although personally I prefer CDMA. It should be clarified that the technology family should go here, e.g. GSM instead of GPRS/EDGE, UMTS instead of HSDPA/HSPA/HSPA+. -- Drahtlos (talk) 15:44, 25 April 2014 (UTC)

MSISDN prefixes

• Florianbruch made a well-intentioned attempt to add MDSISDN prefixes to this article (He called them pstns). I agree with Dima1 that these require their own page, but what should we call the page, and what fields should the table contain? I'm open to ideas. David n m bond 00:33, 29 July 2007 (UTC)
  • With number portability MSISDN prefixes don't always "remain true" Auroria 9:20, 25 Sept 2007 (UTC)

Machine readability

• Could someone provide instructions on how to best read the table (preferably using perl)?

I have a table that includes networkid, countryid, and network name from an application on Nokia S60 phones around the world. I've added several entries to the article's table, but it is tiresome to do manually. If someone wants to do it for me I can give them the URL for my table. The majority seem to already have entries, but there are definitely some that are in my table that are missing in the article's. Davidmaxwaterman 03:49, 31 July 2007 (UTC)

• You can give me this URL, please.--Dima1 06:06, 31 July 2007 (UTC)
• On 21st September, Dima1 made a major change which affected machine readability. He stated: "such structure will be easier to edit data for each country, because a lot of people were afraid of editing so large articles". This change was undone, as it affected machine readability. If you are afraid of changing the article due to the table structure, please contribute to this discussion thread. David n m bond 13:51, 21 September 2007 (UTC)
• Please discuss any table structure changes here before implementing David n m bond 13:51, 21 September 2007 (UTC)

Article contained only one table. It was not convenient for its changing. Now it contains from one table per country. I think it is the best variant for such big articles. You can also see as an example articles:

• List of mobile network operators of Europe
• List of mobile network operators of the Americas
• List of mobile network operators of the Asia Pacific region
• List of mobile network operators of the Middle East and Africa

Imagine what would be if there was only one table. Would anyone want to change it in that case?--Dima1 15:20, 21 September 2007 (UTC)

I must admit to not really seeing why machine readability would prevent breaking it up the way Dima1 is talking about, I'm not even convinced that the page should be machine readable in the first place. Wikipedia is intended for reading by humans, and the page formatting should be oriented towards that.

It's already too large and too cumbersome to scroll through. Firefox slows to an absolute crawl when trying to edit the page and view the changes (or viewing a diff between an older and newer version.) If the page absolutely must have all these operators on it, and can't be broken up geographically as Dima1 suggests, perhaps we could move some of the raw content over to a set of templates? Just a suggestion, --Squiggleslash 15:38, 21 September 2007 (UTC)

I would like to say my opinion: I do not like the splitted version because when reading the table (as human) I am disturbed by all the title lines of the tables (MCC, MNC, ... and that is in bold overmore!) Das-ausgeschlafene-Mammut 15:47, 21 September 2007 (UTC)

This page is (as far as I know) the only freely-accessible place to obtain the full MCC/MNC list. My experience in network operations is that many mobile phone operators worldwide have applications which require a full MCC/MNC table and must import from somewhere. This page seems to be a good source of such data. It would be crazy to create separate human and machine readable pages, so I suggest we compromise with the "single-table" format. I'm happy that the page change format, but let's work out the correct format on the discussion page before making major changes to the page format. In the meanwhile, we can all get on with updating the content! I suggest a period of 1 month while we propose different page formats and then take a vote. David n m bond 20:59, 23 September 2007 (UTC)

I really have a number of problems with this:

First, as I said above, the page is becoming unmanagably large, with at least one browser, Firefox, seriously choking on it when you try to do a diff. It's open to question how much of this stuff has to be on one page.

Second, I'm really not seeing the justification for this being machine readable at all. Wikipedia is not a first hand source, and the information on this page is (already) unreliable (I'm dreading fixing all the CDMA2000 references - why is that standard even listed? Whether an operator has a CDMA2000 network or not (and some listed as doing do not) isn't relevent except for the tiny minority that use R-UIMs.) So who is going to periodically scan Wikipedia with an automated script to import this information into what kind of application? Anyone who does this professionally is being terribly unprofessional, and anyone doing this for their own personal use strikes me as unlikely to need the information to be constantly updated in this way.

Third, the page's usability is compromised by the need to make it "machine readable", and the primary focus of any Wikipedia page should be on human, not machine, use. It, at the very least, ought to be broken up into smaller pages, or failing that, broken up into multiple tables as proposed above.

Fourth, having multiple tables, as long as they're in the same, consistent, format, does not in any way make the page unreadable by computer programs. So the argument against multiple tables is a false one: There is neither any compelling reason to make the page machine readable, nor any reason why the proposed changes would prevent it from being machine readable.

My preference right now is that the page should at least be broken up into separate tables, preferably on separate pages. I would primarily divide by continent rather than break each country up into separate tables because I agree with Das-ausgeschlafene-Mammut above that the presence of table headings every few lines was distracting. --Squiggleslash 12:51, 24 September 2007 (UTC)

My proposal remains that we need to create separate table of this kind for each country.

MCC	MNC	Operator	Operational Status	Technology and Frequency (MHz)
1	2	3	4	5

This version gives us: fast switching between countries, easier to change and update information.

Editing page like it is now (one table for all countries and operators) is impossible for low speed computers and inconvenient for searching while editing. Machine readability in my opinion doesn't suffer in such a great mode as you tell. One table of 77Kb is bad table! --Dima1 11:21, 25 September 2007 (UTC)

All - I'm coming round to the idea of splitting the article up as Dima1 advocates. I think my problem was more with the way this was done - with no discussion first. How about this - we split the page up as Dima1 did recently, but refrain from changing the page format without first having a discussion. That way, those who are screen-scraping data will have some warning and can get their regular expressions warmed up! I would like to keep all the content on one page, however - it's much easier to look for an operator that way, when you're not sure which continent it's on! David n m bond 21:08, 27 September 2007 (UTC)

OK. Done. You can check it.--Dima1 08:31, 28 September 2007 (UTC)

Content of this article

First I would like to say that this is a great page which helps me lots at my work. What I would like to discuss here is following: Some matters are not very clear and seem inconsistent to me with the content and title of this article (please compare also my edit at the discussion page of article "List of mobile country codes"). Just above the table is stated that it contains the complete list of mobile phone operators - what it is not. It is a list of GSM PLMN codes (PLMN identifications, or as stated at the top of the article: a list of MCC/MNC tuples). This should be clarified, shouldn't it? One more fact that this cannot be called a list of mobile phone operators is that the list includes some operators more than one time - when the have assigned more than one MNC in a country. Another thing I want to discuss: As I can assume from the section "operational status" this list should also contain MNCs which have just been assigned but are not in use by a mobile phone operator. I am afraid that regarded from this aspect the list is very incomplete since you would have check out all the country-specific bodies and what MNCs they have assigned. For example when I look at Austria the list is very incomplete because there are several more assigned MNC as listed here. I would suggest not to distinguish if the MNC was assinged or not - but distinguish by another point of view: "Operational" and "Not operational" ... whereby "Not operational" means that either this MNC was or will be operational soon (i.e. a new network is planned). For these MNCs a new column called "Notes" (or "Comments", ...) would be helpful to add some information (as some guy did at the current version of the article for MNC 09 of Greece). And then it should be also defined what means "in use today"? Does this mean a mobile phone operator has issued SIM cards where this MNC forms part of the IMSI and/or does it mean the operator does send this MNC (together with the MCC) on the broadcast channel? So, now I have yet another thing what is somewhat confusing to me: The column "Operator": It's a confusing thing (especially with some mobile operators) to tell the correct company name and/or the brand name(s) - some of them are not even consistent on their own homepages. The explanation given on the discussion page must be visible on the main article page - how should a reader know that there is first the brand name, then the owning company name? Regarding the rule from the discussion page there we have some mistakes in the table. How could we solve this? Maybe separate the column into "Brand" and "Company name"? Former company names could be listed in the "Notes" column (what I suggested to create above). Das-ausgeschlafene-Mammut 15:32, 21 September 2007 (UTC)

"Just above the table is stated that it contains the complete list of mobile phone operators - what it is not (etc.)". True - please change this text to what you believe it should state!

"I look at Austria the list is very incomplete". True. Pelase complete the Austria list.

"...a new column called "notes" (or "comments", ...)". This was tried before and got very messy. My proposed solution was to add the notes on the operator page linked to from that line.

"The column "Operator": It's a confusing thing (especially with some mobile operators)". Agreed - this is not a well defined column. Please propose a better definition.

"we have some mistakes in the table. How could we solve this?" Correct them!

"Former company names could be listed in the 'Notes' column" ...or removed completely?

David n m bond 20:59, 23 September 2007 (UTC)

clarify relations of this list with the various standards

I think it would help a lot to clearly state which specs this list adheres to. Reading the

List of Mobile Network Code (MNC) for the international identification plan for mobile terminals and mobile users

there is a lot less stuff. This list seems to take into account the national specific standards, therefore it would be nice to add a link to all of them. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 87.14.52.82 (talk) 23:01, 26 May 2008 (UTC)

I believe this is all pretty ad hoc. Previously data was available from the GSM Association, but that seems to no longer be the case. The list from ITU seems to be not complete, FWIW. "Network Norway" is one specific case I see immediately. -- Egil (talk) 16:48, 30 May 2008 (UTC)

Suggestions for enhancements

1. I suggest that the very first part of this page shows the current rules that we play by, so anyone new does not have to read the entire discussion. (has been implemented already, please enhance)
2. The rules for the name of the operator with parenthesis and slashes are confusing, and as far as I can see they do not work because people do not read the rules. I suggest we have one column that shows the commercial, short name, and one that shows the formal name of the operator. Previous names can be in the notes column, as appropriate. The brand name corresponds to what will be shown as the operator name on a mobile phone.
3. There should be an extra column for notes, unstructured comments, references and such. It should be restricted in size and coverage, anything beyond a few words needs to go in the article for the operator proper.
4. "Operational Status" renamed to "Status" to optimize space usage for the other columns in the table (in addition it broke the WP rules of use of capitals, anyway).
5. "Technology and Frequency (MHz)" should be renamed to optimize space usage for the other columns in the table. One suggestion is "Technology and bands (MHz)", (band is a more accurate term than frequency), which can be further shortened,

To summarize, here is my suggestion:

MCC	MNC	Brand	Operator	Status	Bands (MHz)	References and notes
334	03	movistar	Telefónica Móviles México	Not operational	GSM 1900 / UMTS 850	This is not real data

I can go through with the actual implementation. -- Egil (talk) 09:10, 15 June 2008 (UTC)

I disagree with brand and operator columns only. In majority of cases operator's ownews are many companies, but not the only one as you have stated in the example. So it would be impossible to write them all. I suggest to keep only operator's brand names, but additional information about their owners would be available in own corresponding articles of each operator. Everything else is OK. --Dima1 (talk) 21:57, 15 June 2008 (UTC)

If we agree on Brand, then I still believe we need another column. Maybe operator is misleading, we can call it Owner. The intention is to have the full name of the official owner of the MCC/MNC. Stating only the brand can be misleading. Like in the above example. the movistar brand is used in many countries, but the owner company (or what you would call it) is different. In Mecixo it is Telefónica Móviles México , in Spain TME etc. I believe it is good to show this. The previous explanation said: Owning company can be placed in parenthesis thereafter. Which is basically what I want to achieve with a second column. I believe every MNC/MCC is owned by only one entity. The ITU document states the information (but does not state the brand). -- Egil (talk) 10:29, 16 June 2008 (UTC)

The idea is to include the data in the ITU tables as well as the data from GSM Association, and make it easy to understand for everyone. Here is a revised suggestion:

MCC	MNC	Brand	Full name	Status	Bands (MHz)	References and notes
334	03	movistar	Telefónica Móviles México	Not operational	GSM 1900 / UMTS 850	This is not real data

-- Egil (talk) 13:59, 16 June 2008 (UTC)

Please reduce the size of Status column and extend the Bands column —Preceding unsigned comment added by Dima1 (talk • contribs) 21:19, 26 June 2008 (UTC)

A lot of providers get data from this page. I propose to include 2 letters country code (e.g. UK for United Kingdom, FI for Finland, ES for Spain and so on) for each country to be clear what country does network belongs. As a lot of mistakes are made by developers of software for mobile phones.

MCC	MNC	Country	Brand	Operator	Status	Bands (MHz)	References and notes
334	03	MX	movistar	Telefónica Móviles México	Not operational	GSM 1900 / UMTS 850	This is not real data

--Dima1 (talk) 14:38, 21 July 2008 (UTC)

That adds another column (and extra width) to a table that is already quite wide. It will also be constant for all entries in one country. I suggest we rather make another table that lists the various MCC, and shows the corresponding ISO code. Should not be too hard to do. Maybe one exists already? -- Egil (talk) 18:23, 23 April 2009 (UTC)

Yes, there is a list in List of mobile country codes. This is where the ISO country code should be added. -- Egil (talk) 18:27, 23 April 2009 (UTC)

This list has now been updated with the alpha two character country codes. -- Egil (talk) 19:19, 23 April 2009 (UTC)

MVNO status

I assume none of the MVNO MCC/MNC will ever be used on-air, and they are thus not that useful. How should they be listed? -- Egil (talk) 12:32, 23 June 2008 (UTC)

We can just write that in comments what network they are using. --Dima1 (talk) 14:26, 23 June 2008 (UTC)

I think it is much better to set the Status field to MVNO. Since they do not have an operational radio network that uses the MCC/MNC code, it is somewhat misleading to set them Operational, I believe. -- Egil (talk) 13:26, 1 July 2008 (UTC)

Please give an example, because I not copletely understand what do you mean. --Dima1 (talk) 17:52, 1 July 2008 (UTC)

Under Spain, we have:

   214 	08 	Euskaltel 		Operational 	GSM 900 / GSM 1800 / UMTS 2100 	MVNO

IMHO this is misleading since there is no on-air network in Spain thar uses MCC/MNC 214/08. One could probably write Reserved instead of Operational, but that is also misleading because I believe that status should be used for planned networks. So my suggestion is to write:

   214 	08 	Euskaltel 		MVNO

-- Egil (talk) 19:20, 3 July 2008 (UTC)

I think the least confusing is to have the MVNO designation under technology:

   214 	08 	Euskaltel 		Operational 	MVNO

I have been modifying the tables accordingly for a while and there were no complaints.

-- Drahtlos (talk) 21:21, 15 November 2016 (UTC)

Reliable sources

It is hard to detect vandalism (or even good faith mistakes) in lists like this, and I don't expect the main contributors intend to watch this page in perpetuity. Now that the article is quite mature every new or changed entry should cite a reliable source. Is that OK? - Pointillist (talk) 01:35, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

Choice Wireless Texas

Choice Wireless in Texas ( http://choicewireless.biz/ ) appears to be still in business but is no longer listed on http://www.imsiadmin.com/ByHNIns.cfm , neither under its current name nor under the previous Choice Wireless LC, CellularOne of Texoma, or Comtel PCS Mainstreet LP. The company was listed with MCC/MNC 310-630, which is now assigned to Agri-Valley Broadband, Inc. - which is no longer in business. Does anybody know which MNCs were actually used by Choice Wireless and Agri-Valley? - Drahtlos (talk) 20:25, 22 November 2016 (UTC)

Colorado Valley Communications Texas

Colorado Valley appears to run an LTE 700 network but I could not find an MNC. Does anybody know? - Drahtlos (talk) 20:46, 22 November 2016 (UTC)

Partnerships

Please add the Vodafone and Tele2 partnership to Lithunaia and Latvia. http://www.tele2.com/media/press-releases/2017/tele2-and-vodafone-announce-new-partnership/ Jahibadkaret (talk) 19:34, 28 June 2017 (UTC)

Page size and purpose

This page has 460,460 bytes of markup code; that's ridiculous. As for "The article is meant to be suitable for parsing by machine"; that's why we have Wikidata. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 23:49, 9 January 2019 (UTC)

@Onetwothreeip: I tend to agree with @Dima1: and @SPukk: that the article is very useful as it is. It is widely used among network operators and equipment manufacturers, to the extend that some operators refer to this article in their approval specifications. Equipment manufacturers program the entire list into their devices in order to translate network codes into user-friendly names. @Pigsonthewing: might be onto something with putting the information into Wikidata. But then this article should not be broken up until all the information is in Wikidata in a well-structured way and there is a documented procedure how to retrieve the entire list. As to the usefulness of the current format, I think that the on average about 1500 views per day speak for themselves. Finally, simply breaking the list in half is counter-intuitive to most readers. If you are looking for a specific code then you obviously don't know what letter the corresponding country starts with. In the current list you can do Ctrl-F in your browser to find an MCC. If breaking up the list later, then grouping countries by ITU MCC region would make more sense (i.e. MCCs 2xx in one article, 3xx in another, etc.) Drahtlos (talk) 14:29, 27 February 2019 (UTC)

WP:NOTDIRECTORY applies. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 14:33, 27 February 2019 (UTC)

You're admitting that the views on this page are by automated programs, not actual people. The article may be very useful to some people in some other way but this is an encyclopaedia, and you are making a good case for why this article should be deleted, not simply split. We wouldn't accept an article about the food that's in my fridge even if it's a useful article to me. If people are searching by numerical code rather than by country then there should be another list(s) that is sorted in that way. There are many ways that items in a list can be listed. If we get an influx of IP users and low-edit accounts then at least we will know they are representing telecommunications manufacturers. If the global telecommunications infrastructure breaks down, I will take responsibility/credit for that. In the meantime we can put the whole list on a user page, I would be fine with having it in my user space, and they can run it from there until Wikidata or whatever deals with it. Onetwothreeip (talk) 21:45, 27 February 2019 (UTC)

Differences in MNCs

We are an MVNO and when our SIMs are roaming we receive call detail records (CDRs) with the MCCMNC of the network where the SIM is roaming. We are using this page to show the name of the operators. But we have problems with several operators because they send their own CDRs with differences in the MCCMNC code. For example, 334 030 is Movistar Mexico, but they send us their own CDRs with MCC MNC 334 03. And we have more than millions of CDRs with this coding. We are completely sure which is the network operator when we receive unknown codes because we check it with our providers.

What can we do if a network announces itself with "non-standard" MCCMNC because they remove a zero o something like this? I've tried to edit the page, but of course, it violates the rules. I think a rule can be defined to address these issues. For example, in the comments column, something like "Also MNC --" where -- can have a variable length. And if it is machine readable, it would solve the problem. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Dielenram (talk • contribs) 11:47, 30 January 2019 (UTC)

Hello @Dielenram: I think that this sort of information should go into the References and notes column. In this specific case perhaps we could say Also uses 2-digit MNC. It seems to be somewhat common for 3-digit MNCs with the last digit being 0 to drop that digit (for historical reasons, where older equipment could not handle 3-digit MNCs as the original GSM standards defined only 2-digit MNCs). Drahtlos (talk) 14:34, 30 January 2019 (UTC)

As I recall, 3-digit MNCs were a US only thing. Everywhere else uses/d 2-digit MNCs. And in practice, major US carriers have MNCs ending in 0 so that they are internationally compatible. For 2 digit MNCs, just add a zero, I guess. - Keith D. Tyler ¶ 22:25, 27 February 2019 (UTC)

Hello @KeithTyler: Initially only the US used 3-digit MNCs. Back in the day many networks outside the US could route only 2-digit MNCs which forced the US to allocate for GSM networks either MNCs ending in 0 or complete blocks of 10 MNCs (xx0 ... xx9). I don't know if there are still such routing restrictions today. A number of countries in the Americas have switched to 3-digit MNCs (e.g. Canada, Mexico). Some countries even use both 2-digit and 3-digit MNCs (e.g. India, Malaysia). Ten years ago you could fairly safely convert between 2-digit and 3-digit MNCs by adding or dropping a 0 at the end but this is no longer the case. Drahtlos (talk) 14:26, 1 March 2019 (UTC)

Then that's a good question. I would expect that the MNC allocator, in a region moving from 2 digit MNCs to 3 digit MNCs, would leave the XXO 3 digit MNCs unassigned for backwards compatibility, but I do not know. - Keith D. Tyler ¶ 07:15, 11 March 2019 (UTC)

Too long

This article is currently the longest article we have, and the simplest solution is to split the article alphabetically, unless there is something else to consider. I have tried to do this, but have been reverted by some who are using this article as a directory for automated programs. Onetwothreeip (talk) 09:17, 27 March 2019 (UTC)

If split alphabetically, how long would each article be? Start with the longest and shortest, and an average. Based on this analysis would alphabetical splitting be much help? · · · Peter Southwood ^(talk): 05:58, 28 March 2019 (UTC)

I had split them alphabetically in half, Mobile country codes (A–L) and Mobile country codes (M–Z) which still exist. They are both about 200,000 bytes. I think this is a satisfactory solution and I would like this article to be restored to the ~50,000 bytes version which had links at the top to those two lists. Onetwothreeip (talk) 06:37, 28 March 2019 (UTC)

What is the problem when it is long like it is? is it technical with mediawiki that it does not start serving it? --ThurnerRupert (talk) 03:30, 1 April 2019 (UTC)

Split alphabetically into at least four parts; or split by continent. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 00:50, 29 March 2019 (UTC)

• Is this list even necessary as the complete data set should be on WikiData with only a hand full of notable examples to explain the formatting Gnangarra 00:58, 29 March 2019 (UTC)

I'm neutral on whether this article should be deleted entirely. For now I'm assuming it will continue to exist, and working how to deal with that. Onetwothreeip (talk) 06:41, 29 March 2019 (UTC)

I'm not suggesting to delete the entire article, just that it shouldn't be a complete data specificlly for the purpose of being machine readable as required above, that is Wikidatas purpose. Wikipedia is not a directory and the content is mostly unencyclopedic, the data should be move to wikidata, and the lists reduced to a notable few examples. Gnangarra 11:16, 29 March 2019 (UTC)

can you make an example on wikidata please? here? https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q31623

How is the content of this list unencyclopaedic when e.g. List of Game of Thrones episodes is considered encyclopaedic? Because of its lower entertainment value? There is literature on how to retrieve List of Game of Thrones episodes programmatically, yet to my knowledge no one has suggested that to be a reason for the deletion of the list. To return to the apparent problem of the large page size, as already pointed out in #Page size and purpose above, a more logical split of the list would be to move the Mobile Network Code (MNC) tables into articles according to their ITU region, e.g. "Mobile Network Codes in ITU region 2xx (Europe)", "Mobile Network Codes in ITU region 6xx (Africa)", etc. (see the intro to the article). The Mobile Country Code article could then have a sortable table of Mobile Country Codes with a link to the respective Mobile Network Code table:

Mobile Country Code	Country	ISO 3166	Mobile Network Codes
505	Australia	au	Link to List of Mobile Network Codes in ITU region 5xx (Oceania)#Australia

-- — Preceding unsigned comment added by Drahtlos (talk • contribs) 14:48, 29 March 2019 (UTC)

You might want to read WP:OTHERSTUFFEXISTS; though it's primarily about deletions, it's pertinent to you query. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 18:40, 30 March 2019 (UTC)

@Drahtlos:what makes the dataset notable, and what makes the complete data set in a list encyclopedic. The only argument put forward for its current format is to make it machine readable, that is exactly what not directory is about. Wikidata is the place for machine readable data sets, the article should be pared back to a more specific group of notable examples. This is happening with every list from heritage to biota to placenames to cast & crews, even populations. The whole purpose is to make these set data types requiring maintenance in one place and be instantly available to the 300+ language wikipedias. Gnangarra 11:11, 3 April 2019 (UTC)

• Support splitting, per the length guidelines. It's correct that bots that need this in one page can get the data from Wikidata (however, regular users do not read Wikidata, so "it's on Wikidata" isn't a deletion rationale, only a rationale against forcing one-page display). If someone really, really, really wants a one-page version at en.wp, then they can make one with sectional transcludes in their own userspace. I'm fine with either an A–L, M–Z "50/50" split, or something narrower, like the by-ITU-region proposal, which is perhaps more logical, as long as things like "Europe" and "Africa" are actually in the page names (we can't presume that a reader has any idea what "6xx" corresponds to). I lean toward to the ITU regional split.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  06:25, 7 April 2019 (UTC)

The consensus of this discussion is surely to split the article, if not to remove most of the information altogether. It's very easy to restore the alphabetical split I made, and that can stand until such time as we decide to split the information in some other way, or we decide to remove most of the information altogether. Onetwothreeip (talk) 08:13, 7 April 2019 (UTC)

• Migrate to WikiData - Think I concur with User:Gnangarra's thoughts here. Seems like a clear WP:NOTDIRECTORY issue. NickCT (talk) 13:20, 8 April 2019 (UTC)

@Pbsouthwood, ThurnerRupert, Pigsonthewing, Gnangarra, Drahtlos, SMcCandlish, and NickCT: Is there agreement to restore the alphabetical split of the article, with no prejudice against a further split of a different kind? Onetwothreeip (talk) 06:19, 11 April 2019 (UTC)

I see a consensus to split, but not specifically alphabetically, and not necessarily to only two lists. The arguments for regional split are also reasonable. I would like to see stronger reasons for why alphabetical or regional split is preferable, and an actual plan. I don't have any strong opinions myself, just looking for the logic and an appreciation of the consequences. If anything I lean slightly towards a regional split with caveats per SMcCandlish. The stuff should be on Wikidata, but for humans to look up Wikipedia is better, and I doubt that Wikidata quality control is good enough for Wikipedia to draw the data from Wikidata yet. · · · Peter Southwood ^(talk): 07:05, 11 April 2019 (UTC)

definitely more than two articles, but have yet to see any argument that makes the complete data set notable. WP:NOTDIR still applies whether its one article or 10, Wikipedia is not the place for this information Wikidata is where it can be maintained and drawn into every project as and where appropriate. Gnangarra 07:29, 11 April 2019 (UTC)

So far I don't see an answer to @ThurnerRupert:'s question as to why the article length is a problem. Also, after reading WP:NOTDIR several times it remains unclear how it applies to this list. That aside, I think that after the split the current main use cases should still be possible:

• look up the MCC/MNC, knowing the name and country of an operator
• look up the name and country, knowing the MCC/MNC

Support for the second case is clumsy at the moment, users need the search function of their browser (Ctrl-F). Splitting the list alphabetically by country would complicate things further. That is why I proposed the split by region, if needed. The reason for putting both the name of the region (e.g. Europe) and the corresponding MCC range (2xx) into the title of the new articles was twofold: It avoids the endless discussions about whether a country is in a certain region (especially Europe vs Asia) and it seems logical in this case to follow the grouping selected by ITU years ago. A sortable MCC list as proposed above would further help with navigation. Another point I would like to stress is that the Remarks column in the MNC tables should be preserved: It often provides a historical context for the re-assignment of discontinuation of a given MNC. Drahtlos (talk) 17:35, 11 April 2019 (UTC)

WP:NOTDIR wikipedia is not intended to list of every possible item just the notable ones. WP:CSC list should only be created if a complete is reasonably short less than approximately 32k, used for navigation or can reasonably be of interest to readers. Gnangarra 04:40, 12 April 2019 (UTC)

Just to be clear to everyone, I'm asking if there is a consensus to restore the A-L/M-Z alphabetical split provisionally (which would take one edit, those two articles already exist) while we continue to discuss a permanent split arrangement. Onetwothreeip (talk) 03:09, 12 April 2019 (UTC)

2 is a start, should be pared back to comply with WP:NOTDIR, full data set should be transwikied to Wikidata reduced to one article Gnangarra 04:40, 12 April 2019 (UTC)

• I don't like the A-L/M-Z split, which is IMO just as inelegant as the current situation, plus less helpful. I am not much fussed about whether we keep the long article, or ditch the lot, or, more constructively IMO, simply remove the tables, each to its own linked "article", which would be harmless, and should be fairly easy for users to modify if desired. It could be done with deleting the current bits to be pruned, only after a month's warning or so. I do understand the "WP not a directory etc" objection, but that is a bit of a trivial point in context. JonRichfield (talk) 11:43, 15 April 2019 (UTC)

How do people feel about deleting this article then? Probably with keeping the information somewhere like a user page, until the data is moved to Wikidata, whatever that means. Onetwothreeip (talk) 02:39, 17 April 2019 (UTC)

• an up to date dataset is at http://mcc-mnc.com/ the MNC & MCC properties are on Wikidata, would suggest protecting this article and telling people to make further updates or changes to appropriate Wikidata items while the table contents are transfer. As a transfer/update is done the table can noted here checked & deleted. Gnangarra 13:14, 19 April 2019 (UTC)

@Pbsouthwood, ThurnerRupert, Pigsonthewing, Gnangarra, Drahtlos, SMcCandlish, and NickCT: How do people feel about this article being proposed for deletion then? Onetwothreeip (talk) 01:10, 22 April 2019 (UTC)

I would oppose. This is definitely not a WP:NOT#DIR failure; it's entirely consistent with all our other articles on finite sets of technical codes, from FIFA country abbreviations to ISO language codes (which we notably also split into several pages, by subsets: List of ISO 639-1 codes, List of ISO 639-2 codes, etc.).  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  01:51, 22 April 2019 (UTC)

I wouldnt oppose it, because the over all topic is notable, its the presentation of content thats the issue.. The table section is definitely WP:NOTDIR, its nothing like the FIFA example which is just country codes, not every sub entity with in each country. If it was restructured to be MCC 000-900 series and their alpha code as tables in each section as per the article title. That would mean removal of the MNC code details making this more like the FIFA lists and more acceptable. That would leave more room for notable MNC articles to be linked from the list where more detail about carriers, and various MNC numbers could be explored appropriately in an encyclopaedic way. Gnangarra 08:36, 22 April 2019 (UTC)

The community won't delete this article, so it would be pointless to try. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 09:34, 22 April 2019 (UTC)

@Dima1, Gnangarra, Xose.vazquez, Pbsouthwood, ThurnerRupert, SMcCandlish, NickCT, and JonRichfield: Please have a look at the article now and let me know what you think. I have moved most of the MNC lists into separate articles. I tried this last week, but someone anonymously reverted the change without comment - not very helpful. Drahtlos (talk) 20:21, 24 May 2019 (UTC)

Size of article greatly improved. No comment on functionality other than I see no obvious problems except the sortable table seems to have a bug. if you sort by countries column then Jamaica appears at number 2, etc. Cheers · · · Peter Southwood ^(talk): 06:02, 25 May 2019 (UTC)

Agree with Peter Southwood except that the sort bugs seem to have been ironed out by the time I came in. I think the lede is inadequate. I did some floundering before finding what it was all about. The lede doesn't have to be long, but a short indication of the meaning plus links to the right sources would be helpful. Something like:
Mobile Country Codes (MCCs) together with the mobile network codes (MNCs) (in combination known as "MCC/MNC tuples") uniquely identify each mobile network operator (also referred to as carriers) using the Global System for Mobile Communications (GSM) and related mobile networks. The ITU-T Recommendation ]]E.212]] defines mobile country codes (MCC) and mobile network codes (MNC). I'll leave the details to anyone concerned and better informed than I am. JonRichfield (talk) 13:12, 25 May 2019 (UTC)

see: foo & empty tables

Sections with empty tables that said something See French Antilles have been consolidated to those sections. The place noted in the section. Gnangarra 15:12, 13 April 2019 (UTC)

Sure Diego Garcia

@M2pa: Agreed, the reference you removed is not a very good one. However, is it not better to have a bad reference rather than no reference at all? I could not find any other source for the non-standard MNC that Sure apparently uses on Diego Garcia. Drahtlos (talk) 16:21, 12 July 2019 (UTC)

@Drahtlos: I checked the IR.21 and the country is using MNO Sure (company) MCCMNC of the mobile number +246xxx is 23455. I'll request from ITU for more details about that country.

No actual definition

So, what exactly is a "mobile country code" used FOR? Dialing internationally? Record-keeping? The article doesn't say. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2603:9000:AC08:A600:2D8A:322A:3E42:E79E (talk) 12:48, 17 August 2019 (UTC)

Section National operators : ISO 3166-2 code for MCC 289 is incorrect

Political opinion apart, this list is in contradiction to the metadata on ISO 3166-2 page. Can we please change this entry to make it consistent on Wiki. Devopam (talk) 09:57, 1 October 2019 (UTC)

Hm, what should it be? ISO 3166-2:GE lists GE-AB. Drahtlos (talk) 13:17, 1 October 2019 (UTC)