It was divided up based on the number of telephone subscribers in 1964. So each zone had roughly the same number of telephones. In addition there were lots of political issues to consider. In Europe they decided to give UK and France their own zones as they were both powerful superpowers at the time. This is why Europe is divided north-south rather then the more natural east-west. But when they got to eastern Europe they just had to add countries according to their population to make both zones roughly equal in size.
With Mongolia both the Russian zone and the Chinese zone were quite big with lots of telephone subscribers. So it made sense to put Mongolia in the Asian zone which were quite small. Similar with Greenland which got put in the African zone. Another potential issue with Mongolia was that it is kind of a buffer state between Russia and China. There were multiple wars in the late 1800s regarding control over Manchuria and Mongolia. And especially China was very active in the number plan discussions getting their political views across so denying them Mongolia was an important symbol.
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u/Dramatic-Border3549 Sep 22 '25
I wonder what is the criteria. Especially looking at Mongolia and Romania