Are there too many numbering of landlines and mobile lines?

17 November, 2021

Contrary to what happened in previous years, and especially in 2020, when the high number of new landlines caused the extension of numbering with new prefixes in 15 Spanish provinces, according to the annual report on the numbering of the Spanish National Commission on Markets and Competition (CNMC), this year there will be no updates in provincial prefixes, at least at a short term.

Numbering of landlines.

With respect to landlines or geographical numbering, according to the CNMC research, only 76.34 million of a total of 90.7 million numbers available (attributed in 2020) are assigned, leaving 14.35 million free, which means 15.82% of lines available.

With these data, the organism states that ‘there is no risk of global depletion of this numbering’.

Numbering of M2M lines.

M2M (machine to machine) lines use certain machines to exchange information and data through private and wireless networks.

Unlike mobile numbering, these types of lines are made up of 13 digits, with a prefix or range beginning with 590.

Most of the operators use mobile numbering for these types of lines, instead of the 13-digit numbering, and this could cause the depletion of mobile numbering, given the exponential growth that M2M communications are facing.

The CNMC has stressed again the need of setting a new date so that from that moment on, only services linked to M2M communications can be registered through the numbering specifically assigned for this purpose, 13 digits and with a range of 590.

Are there too many numbering of landlines and mobile lines?

Numbering of mobile lines.

The usage rate of mobile numbering is 68,21% out of a total of 140 million numbers available within the ranges starting with 6 and 7.

Broken down by ranges, the one that begins with 6, with 100 million numbers, has an occupancy rate of 93.4%. However, the one beginning with 7, with 40 million numbers, has an occupancy rate of only 5.25%.