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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Assuming you are referring to the US,
there are 335 USA area code. That leaves out 7 digits, and each digit can contain one of the 10 different numbers (0-9), and each digit is independent from the others. Therefore, the maximum US phone numbers available are :335 X 10^7=3billion and 350 million phone numbers. US population is around 350 million, barely above the 10% of the maximum phone number possibilities. The actual phone numbers being used may be less than the population due to some people not having phone numbers (i.e. babies, young children, inmates, permanently institutionalized patietns, etc).
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