Have you ever counted the number of digits in your mobile phone number？ Your number has 11 digits. You may sometimes find it hard to remember your number. Thats because China has the longest mobile phone numbers in the world. Why is that？

你數(shù)過你的手機(jī)號碼有多少位數(shù)字嗎？有11位數(shù)字。你有時可能會覺得很難記住自己的手機(jī)號碼，那是因為中國是世界上手機(jī)號碼最長的國家，為什么呢？

The 11 digits can be divided into three parts. Each part has a different meaning. The first three numbers tell you which mobile phone service provider you are using. For example， 135 is for China Mobile Communications Corporation and 188 is for China Unicom. The fourth to the seventh digits tell you where the number is registered. And the last four digits are random.

這11位數(shù)字可以分為三個部分，每個部分表示的含義不同。前面3位數(shù)字告訴你使用的是哪個手機(jī)服務(wù)供應(yīng)商。例如，135表示中國移動通信公司，188表示中國聯(lián)通。 第4到第7位數(shù)字告訴你號碼的注冊地，最后四位數(shù)字是隨機(jī)的。

The main reason for using 11 digits is that we have the largest population in the world. We once had 10 numbers. But as our population grew， there were not enough numbers for us to use. So we began to use 11 digits starting from 1999. Eleven digits can be used to make tens of billions of mobile phone numbers. Thats enough for each person to have seven or eight phone numbers to use in China.

使用11位數(shù)字的主要原因是我們有世界上最多的人口。我們以前用過10位數(shù)，但隨著人口的增長，10位數(shù)已經(jīng)不夠用了。所以從1999年開始，我們開始使用11位數(shù)。11位數(shù)可以組成上百億個手機(jī)號碼，這樣在中國每個人可以使用7到8個手機(jī)號碼。

And mobile phone numbers can be recycled. Usually， the service provider will reuse a canceled number after three to six months. If you call a number that you havent contacted for a long time， you may find that its owner has changed.

手機(jī)號碼是可以回收的。通常，如果一個號碼3到6個月沒有使用的話，服務(wù)供應(yīng)商會重新分配。所以如果你撥通一個長期沒有聯(lián)系的號碼，號碼的主人可能已經(jīng)變了。

Besides China， Britain and Japan also use 11-digit mobile phone numbers. But their numbers always start with 0. So they cannot create as many numbers as we can. Countries like the United States， Australia and India use phone numbers with 10 digits. Canadas mobile phone numbers are perhaps the shortest in the world： they use seven digits.

除了中國，英國和日本也使用11位數(shù)字。但他們的號碼以0開頭，所以不會創(chuàng)造出像我們這么多的號碼。美國、澳大利亞和印度使用10位數(shù)字，而加拿大的手機(jī)號碼可能是全世界最短的，只有7位數(shù)字。

Vocabulary

digit n. 數(shù)字，數(shù)位

divide v. 分割，分成……

register v. 登記;注冊

recycle v. 回收利用;再利用