Gloria: You simply CANNOT tell wheather a North American phone number is terminating on a mobile phone or a normal fixed line.
Paul: Have you ever seen the proposals to create a "single european numbering zone".
The logic behind it is quite sensible as it would do a lot more than standardise the entire EU phone numbering system but would also open the entire EU phone network as a single market with the potential for any operator to offer services right across the entire EU.
As of 1992 they began to create a common european numbering space which included standardising international access to 00, introducing the pan european 112 emergency code, and the international toll free service 00 800 also partly came out of that.
The full proposal is to make the EU (and perhaps other non EU european countries) +3
The existing country codes would become area codes.
E.g. the UK would become +3 44
France would be +3 33
Germany +3 49
Ireland +3 353
This wouldn't effect normal dialling procedures initially.. but would free up a lot of new area codes.
These could then be assigned to regions as necessary to come up with a decent pan-european system.
However, while it might actually be a really good idea in theory it's unlikely to happen as it would be very disruptive to business.
The likely scenario is the expansion of european numbering space services.. e.g. pan european toll free, premium, shared cost, personal numbering and maybe mobile services in the future.
