I'm no expert, but dialing a district and number in France is a 10 digit number. Often you see them printed like this... 02.23.43.15.35
The first two digits are the district of France, Northwest, Northeast.... the remaining 8 are the local number. If you were going to call that number internationally from the US to France, the dialing rules change as you have to add the international codes. So, the number he gave you could well be his local French number, but how to check? Call I suppose. :-D
Here's a snip from another site that explains it better.
The usual convention in listing a phone number in France is to pair the digits and separate the pairs with a space. This convention has nothing to do with dialing, but helps to identify the components of the total number of digits to dial. The basic phone number consists of the eight digits (or four paired digits) counting from the right).
To the left of, or preceding, the basic eight digits is a phone district number. France has five phone districts: a district around and including Paris [that appears to correspond to the political Region 'Ile-de-France', but is not stated as such] is number '1'; northwestern France is number '2'; northeastern France is number '3'; southeastern France (and Corse) is number '4'; and southwestern France is number '5'.
When making a call in France, one must dial a '0' before this phone district number. This makes dialing a total of ten digits [five paired digits].
When calling a number in France from the US, the '0' before the district number is not used. Otherwise, after dialing '011' (the international access code), then '33' (the country code for France), dial just the single digit district code, followed by the basic eight-digit number.
To call the US from France, dial '00', then '1', plus the US area code followed by the basic phone number. If using a phone credit card, check with the paticular issuing company for the latest procedure for calling from France. For AT&T Direct dial 0 800 99 00 11
Good luck
Plaz
