Mount Vema confirmed plans to join the International Telecommunication Union

His Mount Vema Majesty’s Government has confirmed plans to join ITU, the International Telecommunication Union. Although membership of ITU is open to only UN members, which may join the Union as Member States, Mount Vema intends to join initially under the same platform as the Vatican City which is a Sovereign State member of the ITU but is not a member of the UN.
 
The membership is important to the government, to enable the Vema Seamount Territory to use its own country calling code. Country dial in codes are telephone dialing prefixes for the member countries or regions of the International Telecommunication Union (ITU). They are defined by the ITU-T in standards E.123 and E.164. The prefixes enable international direct dialing (IDD), and are also referred to as international subscriber dialing (ISD) codes.
 
Mount Vema currently relies on routers installed on board of ships to connect to other countries, but as the economic activities increase, and to support the nation’s economy and infrastructure, having its own country code will be an important step.
 
Country codes are necessary only when dialing a telephone number to establish a call to another country, and it is dialed before the national telephone number. By convention, international telephone numbers are represented by prefixing the country code with a plus sign (+).
 
If the code is not secured on time, there are alternative plans to join as a private organization like the membership granted to carriers, equipment manufacturers, funding bodies, research and development organizations and international and regional telecommunication organizations, which can join ITU as non-voting Sector Members.