Question

Did you ever count the number of digits (数字) in your mobile phone number? Your number has 11 digits. You may sometimes find it hard to remember your number. That’s because China has the longest mobile phone numbers in the world. Why is that?

We can group the 11 digits into three parts. Each part has a different meaning. The first three numbers tell you which mobile phone service company you are using. For example, 135 is for the China Mobile Communications Corporation (中国移动) and 188 is for China Unicom (中国联通). The fourth to the seventh digits tell you where the number is registered (注册).For example, 0731 shows it is registered in Changsha, and 0733 shows it is registered in Zhuzhou. And the last four digits are random (随机的).

The main reason for using 11 digits is that we have the most people in the world. We once had 10 numbers. But as people grew more and more, there were not enough numbers for us to use. So we began to use 11 digits starting from 1999.

We can use eleven digits to make uncountable mobile phone numbers. That’s enough for each person to have seven or eight phone numbers to use in China.

What’s more, we can recycle mobile phone numbers. Usually, if someone doesn’t use the number any more, the service company will reuse the number after three to six months. If you didn’t call a number for a long time, you may find that the owner already changed.

Like 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. Canada’s mobile phone numbers are probably the world’s shortest: they use seven digits.

1.When you see the phone number 13507336688 in China, you may get the following information EXCEPT （除了） .

A.the service company is China Mobile Communications Corporation

B.the last four digits 6688 tell us where the phone number comes from

C.the phone number is registered in Hunan

2.China has the longest mobile phone number mostly because .

A.it is easy to group B.it has the most users in the world C.it makes difference with other countries

3.The underlined word in paragraph 5 means .

A.循环利用 B.再次购买 C.彻底丢弃

4.Which statement is NOT TRUE according to the passage?

A.Canada uses 7-digit mobile phone numbers.

B.Japan can create as many numbers as China with 11 digits.

C.We didn't use the 11-digit mobile phone number until 1999.

5.What is the best title for the passage?

A.Mobile Phone Companies B.Different Meanings of Digits C.Longest Mobile Phone Numbers

Answer 1