This is more a shower thought that has started to eat at me. Even with the addition of area codes and country codes, with all the businesses and people with multiple phone lines, how are we not out of available phone numbers? Is this something to even be concerned about or is there a process to retire and recycle unused numbers?
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An area code can hold about 8 million numbers — the 10 million of 7 digits, reduced by certain disallowed number placements.
So let’s say your area code gets full. No problem, they split off a new area code. I know one place in the country that’s been in three area codes in the last 50 years.
Can we run out of area codes? Not likely since we can do almost 8 billion phone numbers in this country alone if we use all area codes. And old numbers are recycled.
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