With the intent of forming a trans-Europe numbering plan as an option (or then future movement) for anyone needing multi-national European telephone presence, the ITU allocated country calling code +388 as a subdivided, catch-all container for such services. This was designated the European Telephony Numbering Space or ETNS.
Although some ETNS numbers were assigned, few phone companies supported connecting calls to ETNS.
Because of limited support, and the belief that the need for ETNS was superseded by URIs, ETNS was suspended in 2005 and abolished in 2008. All ETS numbers were cancelled by the beginning of 2010. The +388 code was scheduled to be reclaimed by the ITU at the end of 2010; as of late 2011 it was listed by ITU as "Group of countries, shared code".See also list of country calling codes.