Japan has added a new mobile phone number prefix ¡ª 060 ¡ª amid an expected shortage of phone numbers.
Available numbers that start with existing prefixes of 090, 080 and 070 are running out, and the number of people who own more than one phone is increasing.
The addition of 060 on Wednesday will increase total cell phone numbers from 270 million to 360 million.
Mobile phone service operators are preparing to start offering phone numbers with the new prefix.
Japan¡¯s mobile phone numbers were changed to 11 digits in 1999 from 10 digits previously. The first prefix introduced was 090, before 080 became available in 2002 and 070 in 2013.
All phone numbers that start with 090 and 080 have already been taken up by mobile phone users. As of Tuesday, only 4.7 million numbers that start with 070 were still available.
The expected shortage of mobile phone numbers is likely to worsen as more people use two or even more phones for personal and work purposes.
With your current subscription plan you can comment on stories. However, before writing your first comment, please create a display name in the Profile section of your subscriber account page.