Fundamentals BroadNet answer

What is E.164?

Last reviewed July 22, 20261 min readReviewed by BroadNet engineering

Quick answer

E.164 is the ITU-T international public telecommunication numbering plan — the worldwide standard format for phone numbers. An E.164 number is a country code followed by a national subscriber number, up to 15 digits total, written with a leading '+' (for example +9714XXXXXXX). Every MSISDN follows E.164. Passing numbers in strict E.164 form is the single most reliable way to avoid routing and delivery failures on an A2P SMS API.

Plain-language definitionVendor-neutralReviewed July 22, 2026

The long answer

Everything worth knowing, nothing that isn't.

§01

Anatomy of an E.164 number

A '+' prefix, then a 1-3 digit country code, then the national subscriber number — 15 digits maximum in total, with no spaces, dashes, or national trunk prefixes. The '+' tells every network the digits that follow are internationally routable, removing the ambiguity of local dialling conventions. See /answers/what-is-msisdn.

§02

Why E.164 prevents delivery bugs

The commonest cause of failed A2P sends is a number in a local format — a leading 00, or a national 0 that should have been stripped. Normalising every number to E.164 before submission, and validating it with HLR Lookup (which also reveals the current, possibly ported, operator), removes an entire class of delivery failures. See /products/hlr-lookup.

BNWritten by the BroadNet engineering team·Operating carrier-grade messaging since 2003, headquartered in Dubai·Editorial standards

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