Clarification: distinquishing 2- and 3-digit MNC codes?

General
#1

I was reading the Wikipedia page on MNC codes (Mobile country code - Wikipedia), which is linked from this forum multiple times as an explanation of how these codes work.

The Wikipedia page states:

mobile network code consists of two or three decimal digits (for example: MNC of 001 is not the same as MNC of 01)

However, when I look at the net column of a OpenCelliD CSV file, I see MNC codes that are just one digit long, and no MNC codes that start with a 0. It seems these are handled as integers instead of as 2- or 3-digit identifiers where leading zeroes matter.

Thus, my question: what is going on? Is the Wikipedia page wrong? Or is the data in the CSV incorrectly removing leading zeroes, thus grouping different MNC’s together? Or is Wikipedia only “technically” correct but in are there no such MNC’s in the real world where the leading zeroes matter?

#2

I’ve found country of Canada MNC in the csv file, the code consists of 3~5 decimal digits. Android development doc descrip the mobile network code consists of 2~3 decimal digits(0…999).

#3

Leading zeroes do occur in the MNCs, and “01” and “001” are not the same. I hope the OpenCelliD community will consider changing the mcc and net (mnc) fields to be strings in their database instead of integers going forward. This would eliminate guessing whether a “1” is a “01” or “001”.

Thanks for creating and sharing this database.