Are we running out of phone numbers?
This question was posed to me a few days ago and I did some digging to find out the answer, here in the US. For years, there had been some debate over whether we were headed to a situation where these 10 digit numbers were going to have to be increased by a digit or two, particularly given the explosion of mobile phones and second lines in the home.
Here some basic math on the numbers available. According to the FCC, it turns out that each area code in the US has approximately 8 million numbers available. Currently there are about 660 area codes available in North America, with over 300 areas currently in use. Thus, there is approximately 5.3 billion potential numbers available, based on 660 area codes. Thats a lot of numbers.
So why the problem. The problem in the past has been that telco providers bought telephone numbers in 10,000 blocks. Thus if a provider only used 100 numbers, there were 9,900 numbers that went unused. Well, they finally got smart and pooled the unused numbers. Therefore, the short answer is that we are not in immediate danger of running out of phone numbers. Although I still question why we haven’t moved to a more DNS-based structure to deal with these hard to remember, 10 digit numbers, that in many ways are very personal and private to us.
sal
April 15, 2007 @ 8:58 pm
dns to phone numbers makes sense. although the big issue will be consumer acceptance with such a service. could be though I believe if key service providers get behind it.
Eric Van
April 18, 2007 @ 2:01 pm
Another impact is how the VoIP numbers will impact the “availability”. I use 2 VoIP boxes that I take with me abroad. I had a choice of what area code and decided on Washington DC. This “prestige” factor, I would think ….as people chose any area code they want for VoIP will effect the available pool in area codes.
John Beck
September 28, 2007 @ 11:38 am
Many area codes in North America experience the demand for more numbers. Did you know that every electronic or computer telephone has 4 extra TouchTone or DTMF digits that are not used? The current keypad uses 12 of these digits, 0-9 * and #. The other 4 are called 4th column ABCD digits. Every telephone could have an extra column of 4 buttons on the right of the keypad, or located anywhere actually, and these 4 digits could be dialed. Your telephone number 1 555 563 7242 could have another digit added to it and dialed as 1 A 555 563 7242.
Every telephone company central office and every PBX and every Voice Mail type of service already has the ability to send and receive the ABCD digits. (I use the term digit broadly here.) We in North America have just never utilized the ABCD digits before in the public arena.
Therefore, we would not have to change any telephone numbers and would not run out utilizing the ABCD digits in the dialing plan.