Fun With International Dialing Codes

So for absolutely no good reason, I was looking through the list of International Dialing Codes this evening. (You know, the number you dial after the + to get overseas, e.g. +31 is the Netherlands.) They're mostly 2 and 3 digit numbers. One code struck me as the only four digit code out there... at least on the list I was looking at. Any ideas who it is?

Hint: It's not a country (though many codes are not). In fact it's not really anywhere at all.

+5399 GUANTÁNAMO BAY

I'd love to see the history on that one, since there is clearly a lot of room left in the 2 and 3 digit codes, and several other places that might be conceivably be "temporary" and aren't "real places" get 3 digit codes, like +970 PALESTINIAN SETTLEMENTS. (Or you could attribute it to idealism. Palestine exists as its own country only in the minds of the UN and the International Telecommunications Union. Or to sheer bloody-mindedness. Israel gets 972, cursed by the telephone operators of the world to be separated from Palestine only by the annoying UAE at 971.)

The answer is likely that Cuba is +53 and 99 is simply the area code. So +5399 is no more a country code for Guantánamo Bay than +1713 would be for Houston. But it's listed that way by some authorities.

The shorter codes are the more "important" countries. The US is #1 of course, and France is #33. Poor Oman is stuck out at #968. But, like other international standards, these digits were chosen in a different era. How on earth did Cuba get #53, when huge important countries crawling with call centers like India get a lousy #91?Apparently the numbers are less random than they seem. The first digit of the number is a region... 9 is the middle east type area, 3 is Europe, 7 is the USSR. Lucky #7 for the commies? Kennan and Acheson would be proud... we'll contain 'em behind the number seven!

And in an interesting case of "leaky abstractions", bonus points for naming some other entities which share the three and four digit world... they're not even places...

Satellite providers. In the old days, routing your call to someone else's network automatically meant routing your call to someone's country. (This may be another reason Guantánamo Bay is its own code. Do you really think Castro gets to intercept all +53 traffic and out of the goodness of his heart, route +53(99) calls to the Yanquis without eavesdropping?) Now calling someone elses network may just mean calling their network. Which is why, I suppose, they're called dialing codes now, not country codes.

Clearly, it's time for bed.