Phone numbers are magnificent.
Is that sentiment a little over the top? Perhaps.
That is unless you really give the concept some thought.
Rather than reviewing the history of phone numbers, which in and of itself, is miraculous, let's look at phone numbers today.
We live in a world where collaboration, in its purest form, no longer exists. People disagree, just for the sake of disagreeing. Yet somehow, countries across the globe are able to agree upon an international numbering system for billions of phones.
Phone number statistics are dazzling. For example, in North America, there are a total of 7,970,000,000 possible phone numbers. Given that North America has 10-digit phone numbers, shouldn't there be 1010 (10 to the 10th power) total phone numbers, which equals 10 billion possible phone numbers?
What happened to the other 2 billion+ phone numbers? I'll leave that permutation in the hands of my readers. If you can't figure it out, drop me an email at chase@hashtagcodes.com.
Country | Approximate Population |
Bermuda | 62,278 |
Saint Pierre and Miquelon | 5,794 |
Greenland | 56,770 |
Canada | 37,742,154 |
United States | 311,002,651 |
+ The current population of Northern America is 373,770,279
as of Wednesday, August 31, 2022, based on the latest
United Nations estimates.
There are actually more telephones, and therefore more telephone numbers, in the United States than there are people. Most of us are connected to several phone numbers; our cell phones, home phones, work phones, secret burner phones, etc. How many phone numbers does each of us carry around in our heads, even though we no longer have to? I still remember the phone numbers of my friends when I was a child before we had cell phones.
Granted, the world has changed a great deal over the past 30 years when it comes to phone number requirements.
Of course, when cell phones became a must-have accessory, more phone numbers were needed than anyone could have anticipated.
But there were other, just as significant events that required the addition of more phone numbers. Before cable, broadband, and wireless internet access, we all used an extra phone number, at home and at the office, to connect to the ‘dial-up internet.’ Shortly before the ‘dial-up days of services like America Online, businesses also added extra phone numbers because of an invention that changed the lives of bicycle couriers around the world, the fax machine.
In the past 30 years, our appetite for phone numbers has exploded. Adding an extra phone line, here or there, can be done free of charge with many apps. Our desire for more and more phone numbers has become so voracious that our never-ending available supply of phone numbers that visionaries created in the 1940s and 50s will soon run out.
Our magnificent phone numbers, which carry us from home to work and everywhere in between, are on pace to run out by 2025.
However, mathematics won’t allow such an event to occur. We all know that by simply adding one more digit to a phone number, we will stem the tide, and have more than enough phone numbers to last forever, right?
Similarly, toll-free numbers, yet another kind of phone number, have been embraced by businesses large and small. In fact, toll-free numbers have changed the way every business communicates with their customers.
In 1967, Roy Weber, a 52-year-old employee of AT&T, patented the toll-free number. Unfortunately for Roy, the profits from his invention, have been the source of countless trillions of dollars. Roy recognized that it should be free for consumers to call businesses. His magnificent solution was a new type of phone number, toll-free numbers.
Today, toll-free numbers are not only for use in the United States, there are toll-free numbers that are used to make free international phone calls to businesses.
When someone called us a few years ago, and when we called them, we could identify their location by their area code. Not anymore.
Thanks to virtual PBX and VoIP, employees of businesses can sit anyplace in the world and receive inbound calls from toll-free phone numbers. They can also answer phone calls with phones that have phone numbers that make it appear as though they are in the United States. With internet access, no one really knows where the person that is calling them is located.
Here we are in 2022. Phone numbers are not anything like phone numbers from yesteryear. Despite the speed at which phone numbers have changed, they’re still the same as they always were. That’s why it was so easy to change the way we use phone numbers. We still connect phone numbers to people and to businesses.
In a world with billions and billions of phone numbers, is it possible to have a memorable phone number that consumers have in the back of their minds to call when the need arises?
Ladies and gentlemen, the magnificent phone number, once again, does not let us down. By virtue of the way, we all communicate with businesses, vanity toll-free numbers that just happened to have digits that correspond to words or acronyms have incredible value.
Because, like always, the most important factor for a business when choosing a phone number is that it is memorable.
A memorable phone number is one that you can easily remember and share with others, which makes it easier for them to get in touch with you. It also helps if your company has an easy-to-remember name or slogan, so people will know what they're calling about when they call.
Easy to remember.
The right phone number is easier to remember than a great domain name and/or a great email address.
Even though we all use social media, it’s still not as easy as remembering a great phone number.
Because the bottom line is that nothing generates leads for a business more than an easy-to-remember phone number.
Phone numbers are the easiest way to get more sales and grow your business.
Easy to remember phone numbers encourage customers to call.
Of the hundreds of millions of phone numbers in the US, there are only 12 #code phone numbers. And of those phone numbers,
So you have to ask yourself, in a world where a memorable phone number can turn a business into a publicly traded company, like 800.Mattress, or be the source of millions of calls like 800.Flowers, or 800.Lawyers. How valuable could the easiest of all phone numbers to remember, like #4Law, or #Easy, be to your business?
The best word that I can think of to describe what a branded #code phone number would mean to any business that wants a memorable phone number is "magnificent."
That’s why no one has ever disputed that, despite the fact that phone numbers are magnificent, there are no other phone numbers in existence that can positively impact a business like a #code.
