From January all mobile phone users will have 11-digit mobile numbers instead of their 10-digit numbers currently.
In 2003, the Department of Telecom (DoT) in India had projected the ten-digit mobile numbers would be meet the needs for 30 long years. As of Feb 2009 India registered a user base of 375.74 million wireless subscribers (GSM, CDMA, WLL(F)).
10-digit numbers can cater to an additional 250 million users (approx a total of 626 million users – need to do this math on how they arrive at this number).
DoT has suggested the introduction of the prefix “9″ to all existing mobile numbers to convert from 10-digit to 11-digit. Oh no! What happens to all those poor souls who selected mobile numbers based on numerology! (Update: See the comment below. Numerologists are in trouble as the number retains its numerology value when you add a 9)
The only two other countries to use 11-digit numbers are China (user base of 642.16m as of Jan 2009) and UK (moved to 11-digit due to technical reasons and not due to user base which is lower than India). So the
Rankings of mobile user base by country looks something like,
China – 642.16 million in Jan 2009 (11-digit)
India – 375.74 million in Feb 2009
USA – 276.1 million in Jan 2009
Russia – 181.5 million
Brazil – 145 million
Indonesia – 117 million
Germany – 106 million
Japan – 104.83 milion
Italy – 92.8 million
Pakistan – 90.52 million
