Telephone numbers in Kazakhstan

Telephone numbers in Kazakhstan are regulated by the Telecommunications Committee of the Ministry of Digital Development, Innovations, and Aerospace Industry in the Republic of Kazakhstan, and administered by telecommunication providers, such as Kazakhtelecom, a state-backed and the largest national operator.

Kazakhstan has been sharing the country code 7 with Russia since its independence in 1991. In 2021, ITU reserved the code 997 for Kazakhstan, and the country planned to activate it in January 2023. In early 2023, however, Kazakhstan applied for a change of code to 77. In late 2023, Kazakhstan decided to keep the country code 7.

History
Following the break-up of the Soviet Union, Russia and Kazakhstan retained the same country code 7 for inbound calling. Under an agreement with Russia signed on 11 June 2006, Kazakhstan was assigned zone codes 6xx and 7xx (x = 0 to 9) under the unified plan.

Geographical numbers
Geographical (landline) telephone numbers in Kazakhstan consist of ten digits: Geographic numbers use zone codes in the range from 710 to 729. Prior to the 2006 agreement, landlines used zone codes in the 3xx range; as zone codes 3xx were assigned to Russia, zone codes in Kazakhstan were changed by substituting the leading 3 with 7 in mid-2007.
 * zone code: the leading three digits
 * area code: the following one or two digits
 * subscriber number: the last six or five digits, depending on the length of the area code.

Non-geographical numbers
Non-geographical numbers start with 75x or 76x.

Mobile numbers
Mobile numbers have 10 digits starting with 70x or 77x.

Local and national dialling
Calls within a single area code can be made by dialling the seven-digit subscriber number alone. For long-distance calls, callers from landline numbers dial the long-distance prefix 8, wait for a tone, and then dial the zone code and number. Modern exchanges no longer require waiting for the tone, nor does mobile telephony where the long-distance prefix is not required.

International dialling
The international dialling prefix is 8~10 – callers dial 8, wait for a tone, and then dial 10 immediately followed by the country code and the remainder of the number. Modern exchanges no longer require waiting for the tone.

Country code
Kazakhstan is a member of the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), and has been using an ITU-assigned country code 7 jointly with Russia since the breakup of the Soviet Union. In 2021, ITU agreed to reserve country code 997 for Kazakhstan, which the government planned to activate on 1 January 2023 with a two-year period of permissive dialling using the former code 7.

In 2022, however, Kazakhstan filed another application to ITU, this time for the assignment of the country code 77. In December 2022, and then again in March 2023, an ITU expert group recommended against this proposal, pointing to the unavailability of the 77 code for assignments as well as the ITU policy of assigning only three-digit country codes.

In November 2023, it was reported that Kazakhstan had decided to abandon plans of transiting away from 7 and instead had been working on a new code-sharing agreement with Russia.