For the millions of Bangladeshis in the Gulf, London, New York, and Toronto who call a parent in Dhaka or a village in Sylhet, this is how you reach any phone back home.
Rates updated September 15, 2026
To reach a Bangladesh number from the United States, dial these three parts in order.
011 880 1812 345678
From any mobile, anywhere in the world, you can dial +880 1812 345678 instead. Press and hold 0 to type the +, and the phone picks the right access code for wherever you are.
Numbers in Bangladesh are written locally with a 0 in front, like 01812-345678. Calling from abroad you leave that 0 out, so it becomes +880 1812 345678.
A typical Bangladesh mobile number is 10 digits after +880. If a call does not connect, count the digits first.
Only the first part changes. Your access code replaces the 011, then 880 and the number stay exactly the same.
A ~ means wait for the second dial tone before dialing the rest. It is not a digit you press.
Calls to Bangladesh are $0.08 a minute, billed by the minute. There is no connection fee, no monthly plan, and no minimum spend. You add prepaid credit from $5, and it never expires.
Only for the time you actually talk.
Top up once, use it whenever.
Any number, nothing to install.
Bangladesh receives some of the heaviest inbound diaspora calling in South Asia. Nearly 8.7 million Bangladeshis live abroad, and they sent home about $30 billion in remittances in 2024, the third highest in South Asia - Bangladesh's Economic Vitality Owes in Part to Migration - Migration Policy Institute. The single largest source of both money and calls is the Gulf: over 3.5 million Bangladeshis in Saudi Arabia, about 706,000 in the UAE, roughly 680,000 in Oman, 400,000 in Qatar, and 350,000 in Kuwait, mostly male labor migrants on contract who call spouses and parents daily - Bangladeshi diaspora - Wikipedia. The UAE has recently overtaken Saudi Arabia as the top remittance sender, with the USA and UK next - Remittances to Bangladesh - Wikipedia.
The Western corridor is just as distinctive. The UK holds the largest Bangladeshi community in Europe, concentrated in the east London boroughs of Tower Hamlets and Newham, and famously drawn through chain migration from the Sylhet Division, which is why a huge share of London-to-Bangladesh calls land specifically in Sylhet - Bangladeshi diaspora - Wikipedia. In the the community clusters in the (with a large history in Los Angeles's 'Little Bangladesh' on 3rd Street), plus , , and the fast-growing community outside Detroit - . anchors the Canadian corridor, with in 2023, and carry the Italian one.
Dial your international exit code first: 011 from the US or Canada, or + on a mobile or a browser dialer.
Enter Bangladesh's country code, 880.
Drop the domestic trunk 0. A mobile written locally as 01712-345678 becomes 1712345678; a Dhaka landline written as 02-XXXXXXXX becomes 2-XXXXXXXX.
Dial the remaining digits. A full mobile is 10 digits after +880 (always starting with 1); a Dhaka landline is the 2 plus the local subscriber number.
Complete example: to reach the mobile 01712-345678 from the US, dial 011 880 1712 345678, or just enter +880 1712 345678 in a browser dialer.
Always drop the leading 0 after +880: the 0 is a domestic trunk prefix only - Telephone numbers in Bangladesh - Wikipedia. Mobiles are always 11 digits locally / 10 after +880 and start with 01 / 1 (013, 014, 015, 016, 017, 018, 019). If a number you were given starts with 013, do not treat it as an error: it is a valid Grameenphone series added when 017 ran out - GP gets '013' number series - The Daily Star. Landlines vary in length because area codes run 2 to 4 digits (Dhaka 02 is the shortest, so its subscriber part is longer). ; they only work inside Bangladesh.
The single biggest thing to know: prefixes changed, and old numbers still float around. For years Grameenphone was 017, Banglalink 019, Robi 018, Airtel 016, and Teletalk 015. Then the popular series began to run dry. In 2017 to 2018 the BTRC assigned Grameenphone a second series, 013, precisely because its 017 block was nearly exhausted, and gave Banglalink the new 014 alongside 019 - BTRC approves 013 prefix for GP, 014 for BL - New Age. Each 11-digit prefix can hold up to 10 crore (100 million) connections - BTRC enacts new national numbering plan - New Age. So if a relative gives you a number starting 013, it is a perfectly valid Grameenphone mobile, not a typo, even though older family address books only have 017 numbers.
Portability makes the prefix an unreliable guide to the network. Since Mobile Number Portability launched on 1 October 2018 (Bangladesh became the 72nd country to offer it), a person can keep their number while switching operators, so a 017 number might now ride on Banglalink's network and an - . The number still rings the right person; you just cannot infer the carrier from the digits anymore. This rarely matters when you call from a browser, but it explains why a "Grameenphone number" sometimes behaves like a different network.
Bangladesh uses a closed numbering plan under country code +880, administered by the Bangladesh Telecommunication Regulatory Commission (BTRC) and following ITU-T E.164 - Telephone numbers in Bangladesh - Wikipedia. The domestic trunk prefix is 0, and this single digit is the source of nearly every dialing mistake foreigners make.
Mobiles are the number you almost always want. A Bangladeshi mobile is exactly 11 digits written domestically, in the shape 01X-NNNN-NNNN, where 01 is fixed and X is the operator digit: 3 and 7 for Grameenphone, 4 and 9 for Banglalink, 6 and 8 for Robi/Airtel, and 5 for Teletalk - Telephone numbers in Bangladesh - Wikipedia. So 01712-345678 is a Grameenphone mobile with 11 digits total.
Landlines start with a geographic area code, not with 01, and they are shorter. Dhaka is 02, Chattogram (Chittagong) is 031, Sylhet is 0821, Khulna is 041, Rajshahi is 0721, Barishal is 0431, Rangpur is 0521, Mymensingh is 091, and Cumilla (Comilla) is 081 - Telephone numbers in Bangladesh - Wikipedia. Area codes range from 2 to 4 digits (the trunk 0 plus 1 to 3), and the largest cities have the shortest codes: Dhaka's is just . Because landlines are a shrinking share of lines and mobiles are near-universal, when a business or relative gives you both, dialing the is the more reliable choice.
This trips up almost everyone calling in from abroad. Inside Bangladesh, every number is dialed with a leading 0: you call a mobile as 01712-345678 and a Dhaka landline as 02-XXXXXXXX. That leading 0 is the trunk prefix, and it is a domestic-only routing digit - Telephone numbers in Bangladesh - Wikipedia.
When you call from outside Bangladesh, you drop that 0. After the +880 country code, the number begins with the digit AFTER the trunk 0. So a mobile written locally as 01712-345678 becomes +880 1712-345678, and a Dhaka landline written as 02-9XXXXXXX becomes +880 2-9XXXXXXX - How to call Bangladesh - HowToCallAbroad. If you leave the 0 in and dial +880 0..., the call fails or misroutes. A quick sanity check: an international-format Bangladeshi mobile has the country code +880 followed by 10 digits starting with 1, never with 0.
Calling from a browser removes most of this pain, because you type or paste the number and the country selector supplies the +880. But the trunk-0 rule is still worth knowing, because relatives will read you their number the way they dial it locally (with the 0), and you simply omit that first 0 when you enter the international form.
Short codes are the norm for institutions. The unified national emergency number is 999, launched by the government in 2017, toll-free and reachable from any fixed or mobile line for police, fire, and ambulance - 999 new national help desk number - The Daily Star. Other useful short codes include 106 for the Anti-Corruption Commission, 109 for the violence-against-women hotline, and 131 for railway inquiries - Telephone numbers in Bangladesh - Wikipedia. These 3-digit short codes only work from inside Bangladesh; you cannot dial 999 from the US to reach Bangladeshi emergency services.
Banks and larger companies publish two kinds of numbers. Many use a short 4-digit hotline (things like a bank's 16xxx help line) that also works only domestically, alongside a full landline in the local area code for international callers. When you need to reach a Bangladeshi bank, hospital, or ministry from abroad, look for the full +880 landline (usually a Dhaka +880 2 number) rather than the short hotline, because the short code will not route internationally. Government offices and banks keep standard weekday hours, and the working week in Bangladesh runs Sunday through Thursday, with Friday and Saturday as the weekend, so a Saturday call to an office will not be answered even though it feels like a workday to a US caller.
Most of the diaspora is calling parents and grandparents, and reaching an elder in a village is different from reaching a young professional in Dhaka. Older relatives keep early hours: they are often awake and sharp in the early morning (Dhaka time) and wind down by mid-evening. Since Bangladesh runs a single time zone at UTC+6 with no daylight saving, the math never shifts through the year, which makes a standing weekly call easy to schedule - Bangladesh Standard Time - Wikipedia.
A practical rhythm many families settle into: the US East Coast caller rings around 8 to 10 PM ET, which is early morning in Bangladesh (a good moment to catch an elder before the day's heat and errands). A caller in London reaches Sylhet comfortably in their own late afternoon or evening, which is night in Bangladesh. Friday, the main day of prayer and family gathering, is a natural day for a longer call, though avoid the midday prayer window.
One cultural note that helps: it is common and welcome to call frequently and briefly, a two-minute check-in rather than one long weekly call. Because credit on a browser-based line is billed per minute with no connection fee and no subscription, short daily calls to a mother or grandmother are exactly the pattern the format was built for. There is no cheaper or more expensive time of day to reach Bangladesh, so pick the hour that is best for the person, not the clock.
The Bangladesh corridor has one dominant shape: a person abroad (often on a labor contract in the Gulf, or settled in London, New York, or Toronto) who wants to reach a parent or spouse who is on a standard Bangladeshi mobile and has no special app. That is precisely what a browser-to-phone call handles: you call any Bangladeshi mobile or landline from a web browser, and the person you call needs nothing installed, no app, no smartphone, no account, just their normal phone ringing. An elder with a basic handset in a Rangpur village answers exactly as they would any local call.
It also sidesteps the historical grey-market VoIP problem. Where illegal routes distorted caller ID and cut corners on quality to dodge termination fees, a call placed over a legitimate paid route reaches the recipient as a proper connection - BTRC seizes 42,150 SIM cards - The Daily Star.
The money side is simple and honest: you load prepaid credit starting at $5, credit never expires, and you are billed per minute at one flat published rate for Bangladesh that you see before you dial. There is no subscription, no connection fee, and no off-peak trick, so a quick daily call to check that the bKash arrived costs the same whether you place it at dawn or midnight.
Exactly 11 digits when written locally, always in the form 01X-NNNN-NNNN (for example 01712-345678). Internationally you drop the leading 0, so it becomes +880 followed by 10 digits starting with 1 - Telephone numbers in Bangladesh - Wikipedia.
Yes. 013 is a legitimate Grameenphone prefix, assigned by the BTRC around 2017 to 2018 because the original 017 series was nearly exhausted - GP gets '013' number series with existing '017' - The Daily Star. Banglalink similarly added 014 alongside 019. Older address books often only have 017 and 019 numbers, but the newer 013 and 014 numbers are equally valid.
A mobile starts with 01 and is 11 digits (013, 014, 015, 016, 017, 018, 019). A landline starts with a geographic area code instead, like 02 for Dhaka or 031 for Chattogram, and is shorter - Telephone numbers in Bangladesh - Wikipedia. In practice nearly everyone in Bangladesh is reached on a mobile, so if you have both, dial the 01 number.
Both can be true. Since Mobile Number Portability launched on 1 October 2018, a person can switch operators while keeping the same number, so a 017 number might now run on a different network than its prefix suggests - MNP service in Bangladesh - The Daily Star. It does not change how you dial; the number still rings the same person.
No. 999 (the national emergency line launched in 2017) and short 3-to-4-digit hotlines work only from inside Bangladesh - 999 new national help desk number - The Daily Star. To reach a bank, hospital, or office from abroad, use its full +880 landline (usually a Dhaka +880 2 number), not the short code.
No. There is one flat per-minute rate for Bangladesh shown before you dial, with no off-peak or time-of-day pricing, no connection fee, and no subscription. Time of day only affects whether your relative is awake, not the price, so pick the hour that suits the person you are calling.
Add a little credit and dial any Bangladesh number right from your browser.
Start callingFrom inside Bangladesh, the international access code is the leading part of the dial string, and it is not the usual 00. Bangladesh assigns 001 and 002 as international prefixes, so a call out of the country is dialed as 00-country code-number on most lines - Telephone numbers in Bangladesh - Wikipedia. The dominant outbound destinations mirror the labor corridor in reverse: families in Bangladesh call Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Qatar, Kuwait, Oman, and Malaysia to reach a working son or husband, and call the UK, USA, Canada, and Italy to reach settled relatives. Outbound international calling has historically been shaped by the illegal VoIP grey market: for years unauthorized routes undercut the official rates, which is one reason many people in Bangladesh use app-based calling and prepaid international top-ups rather than dialing 00 directly - BTRC seizes 42,150 SIM cards - The Daily Star.
Every SIM is tied to a real, verified identity, which is good news for reachability. Since 16 December 2015 the BTRC has required biometric, NID-linked registration for every SIM, and over 90% of the country's 131 million-plus active SIMs are registered this way, a system that has made numbers stable and rarely churned - SIM Card Registration Check - allresultbd. It also means the 11-digit mobile number IS the person's financial identity: a bKash mobile-money account number is literally the 11-digit phone number used to open it - Use the bKash App from Abroad - bKash. When you send remittance and then call to confirm it landed, you are calling the exact number the money went to.
Spam, spoofing, and the grey-market legacy are the real friction. For a decade illegal VoIP operations terminated international calls through unauthorized channels to dodge the official termination fee shared with the government, which is why incoming international minutes fell sharply and why caller ID on inbound calls can look distorted or local - BTRC seizes 42,150 SIM cards - The Daily Star. BTRC has cracked down hard, seizing tens of thousands of SIMs and fining all four major operators - Mobile operators fined around Tk8cr for illegal VoIP service - TBS. The practical upshot for you: a call over a legitimate route shows a proper international number and connects cleanly, while grey-route calls are the ones your relatives learn to distrust.
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