Ever wondered what the numbers before your phone number really mean? Like 1, 91, or 44 — who decided them, and why only America and USSR got single-digit codes? Back in the 1960s, when the world’s telephone networks were being connected, the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) introduced the concept of country codes. The planet was divided into “phone zones” — North America → 1 Africa → 2 Europe → 3, 4 South America → 5 Asia Pacific → 6 USSR → 7 East Asia → 8 South Asia & Middle East → 9