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Japan plans to create 10B 14-digit phone numbers with 5G era approaching
- manjana 7y ago14-digit!? No one can possibly remember that easily... Why not alphanumeric and make the address space so big that people can chose one that would be possible for a stranger to remember immediately - like we have domain names, e.g.: cecelia_alberto OR charlotte1231
- Ultramanoid 7y agoDoes anybody actually remember phone numbers these days ? Edit : I do remember the half a dozen I use or might really need, and already feel like an outlier. ( And as pointed in another comment, they're already 11 digits each. Not that much of a difference. )
- manjana 7y agoNo, properly not perhaps. But it would be a nice feature when you have to exchange phone numbers.
- Ultramanoid 7y agoWe exchange cards as a matter of daily interaction. The biggest issue is reading properly a name ( kanji ), not the other data in them.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- ars 7y ago> Does anybody actually remember phone numbers these days ? Children do, or should. Even very young children should be taught until they have memorized their own phone number. And even older children might not have phone yet, but still need to be able to call home.
- jamescostian 7y agoI wonder if parents these days just put "Mom" and "Dad" contacts in their kids' phones and don't bother teaching their kids their phone numbers
- dazc 7y agoI have had the same number for 10 years. A few months ago I made a conscious effort to remember it since I was getting fed up of referring back to my contacts list on a daily basis.
- isostatic 7y ago> Does anybody actually remember phone numbers these days ? Yup, all the ones I knew as a kid in the 80s and early 90s, and haven't used for 2 decades.
- Ultramanoid 7y agoSame here, indeed. And for 3 decades too.
- faissaloo 7y agoI'm 18, the only number I remember is 08456060973 because it was used for a radio show I used to listen to and they'd repeat it constantly. I seldom communicate via the telephony network, if I need to call someone I call them on Telegram, my mum uses Viber, my Dad uses Skype, and if I need to message someone there's more than enough options for that.
- graywh 7y agoI haven't learned a new phone number in almost 14 years. And the ones I do know are all in the same area code, so I really only have to know 7 digits each.
- dageshi 7y agoMemorising peoples phone numbers is about as ridiculous as memorising ipv6 addresses, sure you can do it, but what's the point? You've got a perfectly capable computer in your pocket to remember it for you.
- C1sc0cat 7y agoA battery powered device which is prone to failure / running out of power
- dageshi 7y agoWhat exactly are you going to call them on if it does?
- epanchin 7y agoBorrow a phone, use a pay phone with reverse charging if required.
- prostanac 7y agoAnother people's phones.
- vidarh 7y agoIf I can get online I can get to my contacts. Its been a non issue for me for 20+ years. I'm not going to optimise for something that's not been an issue for 20 years.
- robjan 7y agoYou were involved in an accident and your phone was destroyed. Your doctor asks you who they should call. Now what?
- kalleboo 7y agoInsurance has my emergency contacts
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- gpvos 7y agoThe numbers are for machine-to-machine communication. No one will be calling them.
- majewsky 7y ago> 14-digit!? No one can possibly remember that easily... I have no problem at all remembering my 22-digit IBAN. I know people who memorize random-generated 30-character passphrases. But yeah, we don't seem to be the norm.
- kalleboo 7y ago> Why not alphanumeric Because that mean re-inventing the phone system and making it incompatible with all existing and future devices made for the whole rest of the world. These are going to be for 5G IoT devices anyway, the phone number is just going to be for billing use, all the actual traffic is going to be over IP
- isostatic 7y agoI remember 12 digit IP addresses all the time
- lostmsu 7y agoCan't we use email addresses instead?
- GreaterFool 7y agoGiven that the population of Japan is <130M and is only going to go down from now on, what's the point? :) 14-digits?!?! Yikes. Not looking forward to using that!
- SenHeng 7y agoFor those that haven't RTFA Japanese phone numbers have 11 digits, 123-1234-1234, of which the first three are reserved as identifiers. A lot of people also carry two phones. Many companies also still have fax machines. Even my pocket wifi has its own phone number (can't be dialed). 8 digits is only 100,000,000 possible unique numbers. So it looks like they're simply running out of numbers.
- cbg0 7y agoIf the first three are reserved, why not just expand on those? There are sufficient 3 digit combinations for whatever they would need.
- SenHeng 7y agoGood question. Who knows? When Singapore ran out of phone numbers, they simply tacked on a single digit to every existing phone number. Japan's population is dwindling, that seems like a much easier option.
- delhanty 7y ago>Japanese phone numbers have 11 digits 10 digit numbers are still in use: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telephone_numbers_in_Japan#10_digit_numbers https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telephone_numbers_in_Japan#10_...
- SenHeng 7y agoI've always thought of those as having an invisible 0 that's filled by the system, like when you call a landline number.
- 7y ago
- charliebrownau 7y agoDoes ANY country really need 5g ? Japans population might be dead by 2050 as they outright REFUSE to fix the court system and laws for marriage Just like AU NZ CA UK USA ------------------------- ================================================ How to fix Marriage in the West+EU+JP+South Korea * One LAW for everyone with the SAME punishment for ALL. * REMOVE Duluth Model from LAW+Courts+Police * REMOVE PUSSY PASS * Fault divorce, not no fault * False rape and False Sexual Assault to be convicted * Ban Abortion, its MURDER * Remove Child support * Remove Vagmony (Alimony) * Remove forced 50% of other person's assets * False rape/assault claim register database * Kid goes to the BEST person Not automatically to the mother * DNA test at all birth of kids Yet This will NEVER happen since women will be forced to be actually be EQUAL & ACCOUNTABLE for once ================================================
- avar 7y agoHow are these allocated under the hood? Wouldn't it make sense to stick all of these phone numbers in an IPv6 /64 at this point, with the "14 digit" just being a convention mapping to some range in that space?
- sametmax 7y agoIs a simcard always supposed to have the same ip ? How would ip spoofing would affect the phone network ?
- zamadatix 7y agoWhy not, a single /64 has way more address space than a MAC-48 and we've been permanently assigning those to hardware (including phones) for years. I don't think the spoofing question would change based on what identifier you use. Whatever identifier you give you have to ask and answer the question.
- tamrix 7y agoIt could even be cool to call someone by a domain name like an .id.jp that pointed to that address.
- gpvos 7y agoYou mean something like 4.1.4.1.6.5.4.2.0.2.1.tpc.int ? https://web.archive.org/web/20111014211308/http://www.tpc.int/faq/history.html https://web.archive.org/web/20111014211308/http://www.tpc.in...
- Boulth 7y agoNowadays I guess it's ENUM: https://danielpocock.com/a-quick-look-at-enum/ https://danielpocock.com/a-quick-look-at-enum/
- srmarm 7y agoConsidering > about 32.6 million of the 80 million numbers starting with 020 had already been assigned It seems a bit odd that they're putting the 14 digit numbers on the same 020 prefix that half the 11 digit numbers have already been released for. Seems like some chance for confusion where the first 11 digits collide. I'd have thought it'd make more sense to give a new 3 digit prefix for this class of numbers.
- toast0 7y agoSomeone mentioned they've been assigning prefixes in 020 to carriers in order. The thing to do then is make say 020 [0-3] be 11 digit numbers, and 020 [4-9] be 14 digit numbers. Then it's easy to validate. I doubt they would assign 14 digit numbers where the 11 digit prefix was assigned to someone else, but, if they were desperate for space, they might make the 020 prefix all be maybe 11, maybe 14 and as 11 digit numbers were released, issue 14 digit numbers with the same prefix.
- lifthrasiir 7y agoAs many seem to wonder about details, this is my understanding of the situation (I've posted some below, but this format would be better): - 070, 080 and 090 prefixes are being used for mobile phones and M2M (machine-to-machine) communications since 1999. They are 11 digits long and the future shortage was expected. - 020 prefix was created exclusively for M2M in 2017. The existing M2M numbers do not have to migrate, but it is recommended for most cases as 020 prefix has no requirement for the number portability and QoS. So the creation and expansion of 020 prefix is irrelevant to the population estimate. - Since 0204 prefix was already used for pagers, and since 0 is a trunk prefix in Japan, there were initially 80 million numbers available, starting with 0201--0203 and 0205--0209. - It was envisioned that 80 million numbers do not suffice for the future expansion of IoT devices, so there was already a plan for 13- or even 14-digit numbers at the time. Note that while 14-digit numbers are within the E.164 recommendation (e.g. +81-20-XXX-XXXXXXXX = 020-XXX-XXXXXXXX) it does seem to cause some serious engineering problems to tackle. - 020 prefix was allocated in the increasing order, so numbers up to 020-536-XXXXX are allocated as of May 2019 [1]. It is expected that the digit expansion will happen in the remaining area. - While 020 will greatly postpone the exhaustion, existing 070--090 prefixes would be eventually full in the future. 030, 040 and 060 prefixes once used but now vacant are reserved for this inevitability. [1] http://www.soumu.go.jp/main_content/000477284.pdf http://www.soumu.go.jp/main_content/000477284.pdf
- JimboOmega 7y agoBut why would Japan run out of phone numbers with the population shrinking? While of course IoT devices need to be addressable, that's more of an IPv6 problem than a phone number problem.... right? A person might have a few numbers, at most - and a flat if not shrinking number (I used to have home, work, cell; but have only had cell for a while now)
- thefounder 7y agoAt some point we should stop using numbers and use something like an email address.
- Funes- 7y agoIndeed. Using self-descriptive "handles" or usernames such as @name.surname or @company.city would be great for caller and texter identification, as well as user discovery--if they want it to be public, that is. That, and having to send a request before you can contact anyone would bring some control and protection back to the user.
- epanchin 7y agoHow would international calls work?
- Moeg 7y agoThe same way website addresses work, DNS type of thing?
- digitalsushi 7y agoif we're going to reinvent PSTN, can we also include in that specification an arbitrary length numeric passcode that a number owner can set, and reset, to require for the call to ring through, or even return the SIT if the passcode fails?
- neilalexander 7y agoIncidentally, this is already possible with SIP, which is behind most standardised VoIP signalling. In particular it allows for federation too.
- andyjohnson0 7y agoRegarding machine-to-machine communications, I'm wondering if these extra numbers are needed because mobile devices require a phone number to interface to mobile networks, even thought they typically only initiate data exchanges. Or‡ are there devices that actually receive phone calls - as in dial-up? ‡ not familiar with tech in Japanese infrastructure
- michaelt 7y agoThere are certainly cheap GPS trackers that send SMS messages. Of course, those are usually sold to consumers rather than into the M2M market.
- lcnmrn 7y agoWhat's wrong with case insensitive letters? US-ABC-900-900 can be a beautiful phone number and global. 165,216,101,262,848 numbers per country. US-ABCD-900E-900R in case we run out of numbers again.
- jasonhansel 7y agoMost countries don't use the English alphabet, so I'm not sure if that would work outside the US.
- dagw 7y agoMost countries don't use the English alphabet I strongly suspect that most countries (and certainly a majority of the world population) use a super-set of the English alphabet though.
- sundaeofshock 7y agoYour suspicions are incorrect. Only 36% of the world’s population uses the Latin alphabet. https://www.worldstandards.eu/alphabets/ https://www.worldstandards.eu/alphabets/
- lcnmrn 7y agoEven digits can be written differently in other languages. https://www.omniglot.com/language/numerals.htm https://www.omniglot.com/language/numerals.htm
- 7y ago
- sschueller 7y agoWhat do we have IPv6 for? I thought these 4G/5G networks run a TCP stack and telephony on top of it. Why do we phone numbers for device to device communication?
- lemcoe9 7y agoGive me a call at [2607:f8b0:4004:802::200e] and I'll tell you.
- ianlevesque 7y agoOnly robots make phone calls now.
- 27182818284 7y agoI think this is an underrated comment. I think 99% of my phone calls now are robo-calls or organizations I've done some transaction with calling. Very few (1% or less) of my phone calls are like friends and family--other mediums just took those over completely.
- netsharc 7y agoIn the grim future, you'll have a bot that can talk to your family and friends, like this with text to speech, using your voice: https://www.theverge.com/a/luka-artificial-intelligence-memorial-roman-mazurenko-bot https://www.theverge.com/a/luka-artificial-intelligence-memo...
- sbjustin 7y agoI completely agree but the consideration is your phone is dead and you need to get ahold of someone. You should be able to easily memorize some way to contact emergency contacts IMO.
- metrix 7y agoGive me a call at metrix.afraid.org instead.
- gumby 7y agoM2M should just use IPv6 natively which would leave enough 11 digit numbers for human use. And the fact that they are willing to go to 14 digit means they know that few people dial numbers manually anyway.
- throw0101a 7y agoIn case anyone is wondering, ITU E.164 specifies that maximum length of a phone number is 15 digits: * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E.164 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E.164 * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telephone_number https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telephone_number Given that Japan's country code is +81, that leaves thirteen digits for however Japan wants to assign it internally.