Have you ever looked at people glued to their mobile phones all around you and wondered how many phone numbers there are in the world? The answer to this question isn’t straightforward because of daily factors that influence these numbers.
How Many Phone Numbers Are There in the World?
There are about 7 billion mobile phones in the world, according to statista.com. Thus, there should be at least that many phone numbers, including landlines and other unique numbers; there are about 8 billion phone numbers, with China, India, and Indonesia leading, respectively. You should also keep in mind that these are only active ones. Moreover, some phones are double SIM activated and let you use two SIM cards simultaneously.
So, when you think of how many phone numbers are there in the world, you can’t say because there are so many variables, but it should be over 8 billion, according to statista.com. A mobile phone is owned by 62.9 percent of the world’s population.
How Many Phone Numbers are there Per Area Code?
The answer to this is dependent on where you are in the world. While it might be challenging to know exactly how many phone numbers there are worldwide, the number of phone numbers per area code can still be determined.
There are theoretically 9,999,999 options if you’re talking about the American numbering system with an area code plus seven digits. Certain number combinations, on the other hand, would be excluded.
For example, the subscriber number is unlikely, to begin with, 0; therefore, 1,000,000 possibilities are ruled out. Other number combinations, such as 1234567, 9876543, and so on, are also possible.
Regular phone numbers are denoted by the letters NXX-XXXX (ie, 555-1234), where N represents any digit from 2 to 9, while X represents any digit from 0 to 9. There are 792 prefixes or “NXX” codes for each area code, which means there are 10,000 potential numbers for each NXX.
As a result, each area code has a potential capacity of 7,920,000 phone numbers. However, not all phone numbers are used in practice because carriers require test numbers and other codes.
Read also: Getting “This Phone Number Cannot Be Used for Verification”? Best Options
How Many 10-digit Phone Numbers Are Possible?
There are 10 billion possible numbers. Let’s start with the most basic scenario. You have 10n potential phone numbers if you consider an n-digit phone number. Why? This is because you have the numbers 0 through 9, or ten possible possibilities if you have a one-digit number.
If you have a two-digit phone number, the first digit can be any number from 0 to 9; for each, a second digit can be any number from 0 to 9, giving you a total of ten possible numbers (a hundred possible numbers).
Then, if you have a three-digit phone number, the first and second digits each have 100 possible values, and the third digit has 10, giving you a total of 1000 possible numbers.
So, after reaching the tenth digit, we have 1010 numbers to choose from. What is the value of 1010? It’s 10’000’000’000, or 10 billion, as many refer to it.
How Many Phone Numbers are there in the UK?
In the UK, around 95 million numbers are assigned to mobile phone providers. In comparison, there are about 33 million numbers for fixed-line, according to statista.com as of December 2021, and the desire to recycle old numbers means that new numbers are being added to the ever-growing number.
How Many Phone Numbers are there in the US?
There are 293 valid area codes in the United States, according to allareacodes.com. This puts the total number of possible phone numbers at 2.93 billion right now because, In the United States, there are 10,000,000,000 (10 billion) potential digits for each space in a 10-digit phone number. However, remember that new area codes are added as needed and change often.
Telecom service providers are the only entities that know how many active numbers they have. In a procedure known as Numbering Resource Utilization Forecasting, all service providers report this to the North American Numbering Plan Administrator (NANPA) twice yearly (NRUF). The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) aggregates the data and produces a report after receiving these reports from NANPA. The detailed data is never disclosed since it is considered competitively sensitive.
Conclusion
To recap, how many phone numbers are there in the world? There is no definite number for this, but it is estimated to be about 8 billion phone numbers, although there could be changes as often as the population grows or more people can afford phones.
John follows everything happening in the tech industry, from the latest gadget launches to some of the big-name moves in the industry. He covers opinionated pieces and writes on some of the biggest names in the industry. John is also a freelance writer, so he shares articles on freelancing every now and then. email: john@tekpip.com Learn more about tekpip and the team here on our about us page.