Why Is Nigeria Still Using 11-Digit Phone Numbers While Others Add More?

Many countries face number exhaustion as smartphones, dual-SIM devices and IoT gadgets multiply. They resolve it by adding extra digits, creating overlays or assigning long numbers to machines, then keeping short numbers for people. Brazil, the UK and France each expanded their systems by forcing an extra digit. North America now uses area-code overlays. Some nations speed up recycling of old numbers, while others give IoT a separate 13- to 15-digit range. Nigeria could adopt a similar approach: reserve 11 digits for voice calls, assign longer blocks to routers, cameras and trackers, or introduce regional prefixes. This strategy would mirror the shift from IPv4 to IPv6 on the internet.

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