Japan Plans To Create 10 Billion 14-Digit Phone Numbers as 5G Era Nears (japantimes.co.jp) 91
Japan's communications ministry plans to create for assignment some 10 billion 14-digit phone numbers starting with the code "020." From a report: With the commercialization of fifth-generation, or 5G, superfast mobile communications fast approaching, 11-digit numbers are expected to run out as early as fiscal 2022. The plan to introduce the new numbers, by the end of 2021 at the latest, was proposed at a recent meeting of a panel of experts. It was accepted by the three major mobile phone operators -- NTT Docomo Inc., KDDI Corp. and SoftBank.
and how much software that works on the 11 number (Score:5, Interesting)
and how much software that works on the 11 numbers system will need to be changed??
for an cell phone it's not like the pbx system with ext's so texting may not work
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Wait, can you not use exts with cellphones and texts?
Re:and how much software that works on the 11 numb (Score:4, Interesting)
Probably very few. I mean if they designed it for exactly 11 digits it'd only work in Japan, and even then probably not for everything. Here in Norway we have 3 digits (emergency services, it's not 911 tho), 5 digit "short" numbers that most large companies use for customer service, 8 digit ordinary numbers and 12 digit device numbers. Even if they did have some anal verification of local numbers you could probably/hopefully get around it by writing it in the international form so +81<14 digits>. It's going to get half-assed anyway, like validating email addresses. I've found you get 99.9% of the benefit just checking for an @ sign, it's like one technically illegal address to a thousand misspelled ones.
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and how much software that works on the 11 numbers system will need to be changed??
Very likely "none", and in some rare cases it would be "none that matter"
All software made in the last 20 years supports the E.164 standard, which defines variable length numbers and a max of 15 digits.
You can easily determine if your carrier uses E.164 by attempting to call outside of your home country.
If you can do so, they are using it.
If you can't call other countries, they possibly are not, but in that case it won't matter what Japan does as you can't call them now anyway.
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I'm pretty sure 02/02/T020200006D0001PDFE is more than 10 or 11 digits, not to mention slashes and letters are not numbers.
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and how much software that works on the 11 numbers system will need to be changed??
Absolutely none. 020 is not a valid dialling code in Japan at present. The changes being proposed here are no different for existing systems than the prefecture of Nagano adding another suburb somewhere and having to give them existing 11 digit numbers.
Dialling codes work by pattern matching, usually from left to right at whoever is doing switching. They are not character limited and the phone system was fundamentally designed to handle modifications like this.
A far harder change is adding an intermediate n
Why do we use phone numbers? (Score:2)
Seriously, why the heck do we still need phone numbers? It's totally IP based. Why can we not use an address? Like an email address or something.
The user could register that particular IMEI to an email address so the network would know which handset to route the call to.
Most people cannot even remember their own phone number anymore. How the hell will anyone remember a 14 digit number?
Re:Why do we use phone numbers? (Score:5, Informative)
Seriously, why the heck do we still need phone numbers?
Legacy. How are you supposed to dial an email address from a landline?
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Phone numbers should be technical identifiers like IP addresses. They should not be portable. Instead they should be hidden behind a layer of indirection: DNS. Voice should be just another protocol over IP.
So when the internet goes down or you have no coverage then what? No communications for you, or do you propose changing all the cell towers to wifi repeaters with similar range somehow. Not everything has to go over the internet and not everything should.
Re: Why do we use phone numbers? (Score:2, Insightful)
There is no voice channel on modern cell networks. If the internet goes down, cell phones can't make calls.
Phone priced between domain and domain+hosting (Score:2)
a phone number costs more than a domain
But less than a domain and hosting. T-Mobile USA offers a stand-alone cell phone number for $36 per year, including 30 incoming or outgoing minutes or texts per month. A magicJack converter box for people who already subscribe to Internet costs $50 and includes a year of unlimited calling to phone numbers in USA and Canada. Though a domain costs maybe $10-$15 per year, I've read that a basic VPS starts at $60+ per year.
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1 = 1/.@
2 = 2ABC
3 = 3DEF
4 = 4GHI
5 = 5JKL
6 = 6MNO
7 = 7PQRS
8 = 8TUV
9 = 9WXYZ
* = *+
0 = Space
Come on you whipper snappers, there was a day in the not so long ago time of the early 2000's where most phones didn't have full keyboards, but were texting their friends like there was no tomorrow. They just hit the numeric key a certian number of times to get the letter, then over time it will move to the next letter, or will move if you hit an other letter.
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yeah, how convenient
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Those once teens of the age, were actually rather proficient at it. I was actually a little too old to be good at it, but I could be effective.
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Not to mention, everyone would have to get new business cards if they changed.
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Never mind the business cards, think of all the HTML code that would need to be updated to reflect those new phone numbers!!1
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Remove all the landlines.
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Phone numbers aren't tied to SIM cards. SIM cards have the ICCID, your phone has the IMEI, and your number is assigned by your operator to a specific SIM at a given time.
Re: Why do we use phone numbers? (Score:2)
Can as well do ipv6.
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I'd go the other way. With phone number portability, my mobile number is unlikely to change... ever. By contrast, I've had different email addresses for every job, school, and ISP I've ever used. My home address has changed a dozen times. If anything, I'd want the system you propose to tie my email and home address to my unchanging phone number.
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Most people cannot even remember their own phone number anymore. How the hell will anyone remember a 14 digit number?
Same way they don't memorise them now, type them in once and save as a contact. I practically only know my own number these days but that is pretty useless in itself lol
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Well, it's not really a 14 digit number. It's an 11 digit number with a different 3 digit prefix. While that's technically 14 digits, it's really a 11 digit number with a bit (020 prefix)
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It's a 14 digit number.
the current spec for 020 is 11 digit 020 NXXX XXXX (Officially: +81 20 NXXX XXXX; N != 0)
This is being expanded to 14 digit 020 YYY XXXX XXXX (Either en masse, or 020 0YY XXXX XXXX to keep current dialling plan in place, and not have to migrate any current 020. This brings them to the max addressable.
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Because all the phones are behind carrier-grade NAT. And if they went with IPv6, well....those aren't easy or pretty for sharing. What if we created a DNS server where your TLD is a 14-digit number. I'm not sure what brand of inner platform you want.
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Merge phone numbers with IPv6 (Score:5, Funny)
This is about IoT (Score:2)
"For âoeinternet of thingsâ devices, 11-digit numbers starting with âoe020â have been used since January 2017."
After those initial 3 digits, there are only 8 left, which isn't very many. However: if we're talking about IoT devices, why aren't they just issuing IPv6 addresses? Seems like a better approach than phone numbers.
Anyone know what the Japanese use-case is here?
How many phones? (Score:2)
How many phones does each person in Japan have?
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The same reason IPv4 is running out; frivolously throwing away numbers at whoever asked while they were abundant.
There's a case for a '911' (or whatever local equivalent) taking up 100,000,000 possible numbers, but there's probably a lot of waste caused by similar short numbers or pretty structures that serve no other purpose than to look fanciful.
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The same reason IPv4 is running out; frivolously throwing away numbers at whoever asked while they were abundant.
Pretty much this.....MIT was given the entire 18.0.0.0/8 block back in 1977, and only recently started to sell some of them off.
https://www.internetsociety.or... [internetsociety.org]
Re:How many phones? (Score:4, Informative)
Land lines still use 10-digit phone numbers.
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All digits need to be uniquely identifyable by prefix; and unambigious.
Local dialling cannot interfere with Non-Local Dialling.
Geographic Prefixes for land lines need to be accounted for.
Short codes 119, can't match any prefix for longer codes.
In this specific case:
Use of leading digits of SN for 20Axxxxxxx;
0 - leading 0, Non-Local Dialling Plan, .
2 - Non-Geographic; Pager, Embedded Device, Business Services
0 - (Filler; 3 digit area code prefix, for future expansion)
020 - Expe
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IPv6? (Score:2)
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That's just what I was thinking. By the time you're up to 14-digit numbers, you're past the point of easily remembering new ones or rattling them off. You might as well go for something even longer that will never need to be replaced, then add a resolution layer (akin to DNS) on top so that you can communicate the numbers more easily. E.g. "You can reach me at monarchy-travesty-easter-combine", which resolves to a ridiculously long number that will reach a particular phone.
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then add a resolution layer (akin to DNS) on top so that you can communicate the numbers more easily.
You could even use an easy to read number as the hostname - say 14 digits. In fact, let's just go with E.164 [wikipedia.org]
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That's like suggesting the use of IPv4 to resolve IPv6 address. It only works on a small subset of addresses, but won't work in the general case because you'll run out of IPv4 addresses before you run out of IPv6 addresses, which was the exact problem you were trying to solve in the first place. The DNS-like solution I suggested has no such issue, in the same way that DNS itself doesn't have that issue.
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It only works on a small subset of addresses, but won't work in the general case
It doesn't have to work in the general case. Because the general case could still mean using DNS with non-number hostnames. It only has to maximize interoperability in the meantime by giving something for the existing numbers to resolve to.
Just 14 ? (Score:5, Funny)
If the phone numbers are limited to just 14 digits how is one is supposed to call 0118 999 881 999 119 725 3 ?
Re: Just 14 ? (Score:1)
Just whistle the tones.
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
What year is it? (Score:2, Insightful)
It's really sad to see Japan, home of widespread multi-gigabit fiber internet and people who can figure out how to clean and sort their recyclables wed themselves so irrevocably to a dying technology. Simply adding a country code would be enough to double the number of phone numbers, which surely should be enough to hold them until they convert all telephony to IP.
I'd have thought Japan of all countries would have managed it already, but alas.
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uh, Japan's country code is 81. All phone numbers have an implied 81 at the front. Japan can figure out things, you're a retard.
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countries can't unilaterally up and decide to make a new country code, anon. LOLZ
The ITU of the United Nations assigns those. Japan gets ONE fucking country code, period. end of story.
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Japan is also a country that still relies on Fax service for most forms and paperwork.
Let the free market sort it out (Score:3)
They should reduce the 11 digit system, and offer 10 digit numbers only. The highest bidder gets to have a phone number, and everyone else gets an IPv6 address.
Why? (Score:2)
Why are phone numbers used for devices that are not voice capable? Use a different ID. But a data only device should not have a phone number.
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It can make phone calls; though it's restricted to 911, presumably for cheaper rates on the cellullar service.
There's technically nothing stopping it from being used as a regular cellular connection w/ voice other than contract.
It also needs to identify itself to all the intermediary servers in a consistent manner.
Cross network transport and billing is also done by the subscriber number.
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Voice is not the only thing a phone number is used for. Many devices are used to push SMS messages only.
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How about implementing variable length phone numbers? North America - NANP, France, Japan have this issue... So every now and then, there is a phone number schema change...
Other countries do not have this issue... Example : Germany. You can get the following phone numbers: +49 700 55512345555 +49 700 5551234555 +49 700 555123455 +49 700 55512345 All distinct...
How does the operator know when you've stopped dialing?
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In this case, the GP is not technically accurate.
+49 700 as defined by the DE ITU, consists of a fixed 11 digit dialling (like most numbers in Germany, it's fairly uniform)
+49 700 555 12345 is the Phone number
Where "National Destinatino Code 700" is defined as "Minimum Length 11; Maximum Length 11; Personal Dial Code; Non Geographic"
As Germany gives most subscribers a DSL connection rather than a plain telephone wire, the rest of the digits dialled are presented to the PBX in advance.
so +49 700 555 123
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In at least one place the U.S., dialing a number containing the digits "911" but pausing too long between that second 1 & the next digit will cause it to dial 911 instead. Or at least, it did when I accidentally did so as a kid.
Which makes me wonder...why not just avoid issuing numbers containing "911" as a substring?
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Fax machines. Japanese businesses are still in love with the fax machine. I think it has to do with the complexity of the written language and entering it into computers.
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I thought business men over there preferred girls in school uniforms, or at least sex dolls, but whatever works for them...
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Practise safe fax.
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Yes.