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Telephone numbers in mainland China

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Through Internet of things

Landline calls within the same area do not require the area code. Calls to other areas require dialing the trunk prefix 0 and the area code.

Hong Kong, Macau, and Taiwan are not part of this numbering plan, and use the calling codes 852, 853, and 886 respectively.

Mobile phones

In mainland China, mobile phone numbers have eleven digits in the format 1xx-XXXX-XXXX (except for 140–144, which are 13-digit IoT numbers), in which the first three digits (13x to 19x) designate the mobile phone service provider.

Before GSM, mobile phones had 6-digit (later upgraded to 7-digit) numbers starting with nine. They had the same numbering format as fixed-line telephones. Those numbers were eventually translated into 1390xx9xxx, where xx were local identifiers.

The oldest China Mobile GSM numbers were ten digits long and started with 139 in 1994, the second oldest 138 in 1997, and 137, 136, 135 in 1999. The oldest China Unicom numbers started with 130 in 1995, the second oldest at 131 in 1998. Keeping the same number over time is somewhat associated with the stability and reliability of the owner. The 5th to the seventh digit sometimes relates to age and location.

China's mobile telephone numbers were changed from ten digits to eleven digits, with 0 added after 13x, and thus the HLR code became four-digit long to expand the capacity of the seriously fully crowded numbering plan.

In 2006, 15x numbers were introduced. In late 2008, 18x and 14x (for data plans or IoT) were introduced. In late 2013, 17x were introduced. In 2017, 16x and 19x were introduced.

In December 2016, each cell phone number was required to be consigned to a real name in mainland China.

In November 2010, MIIT has started the trial mobile number portability service in Tianjin and Hainan, in 2012 the trial has extended to Jiangxi, Hubei and Yunan provinces. On 10 November 2019, all provinces started accepting MNP requests for all mobile carriers, except for technical difficulties, the MVNO phones, satellite phones and IoT phones.

Mobile service carriers can be identified by the first three or four digits as follows:

  1. China Unicom before 2009
  2. Operated by China Transport Telecommunication Information Group Co., Ltd.
  3. TD-SCDMA networks deprecated by China Mobile in 2020
  4. China Unicom finalize deprecated the GSM networks in 2021. A plan to deprecate GSM by China Mobile announced in 2023, scheduled to shut down in 2025
  5. CDMA2000 1x Ev-Do networks deprecated in 2022, and CDMA2000 1x RTT in 2024
  6. LTE compatibility of China Broadnet SIM cards only available on Apple iOS devices
  7. WCDMA networks are being deprecated by China Unicom since 2023

1G TACS networks were provided by China Telecom since 1987, operations transferred to China Mobile in 1999, the year China Mobile established, 1G shut down in 2001.

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