Do you know your mobile phone number well? You may sometimes find it hard to remember your number. That's because China has the longest mobile phone numbers in the world. Why is that?
The 11 digits (数字) include three parts. Each part has a different meaning. The first three numbers tell you the mobile phone service provider (服务提供商) you are using. For example, 135 is for the China Mobile Communication Corporation (中国移动) and 186 is for China Unicorn (中国联通). The fourth to the seventh digits tell you where the number is from. And the last four digits are random (随机的).
The main reason for using 11 digits is that we have the largest population (人口) in the world. We once had 10 numbers. But as our population grew, there were not enough numbers for us to use. So we began to use 11 digits from 1999.
11 digits can make tens of billions of mobile phone numbers. That's enough for each person to have seven or eight phone numbers to use in China. Also, we can reuse the mobile phone numbers. Usually, the service provider will use a canceled number again after three to six months. If you call a number that you haven't called for a long time, you may find its owner has changed.
Besides China, Britain and Japan also use 11-digit mobile phone numbers. But their numbers always start with 0. So they cannot make as many numbers as we can. Countries like the United States, Australia and India use phone numbers with 10 digits. Canada's mobile phone numbers are perhaps the world's shortest: they use seven digits.
