Let be the number of telephone lines in use. The memorylessness of the exponential distribution makes a continuous-time Markov chain, specifically the M-M-infinity queue with generator rates
Suppose and put . Each initial call is still active at time with the exponential survival probability , independently of the others. Their surviving number is therefore
A call arriving at time survives until with probability . By Poisson thinning, the number of surviving new calls is independent of and has law
Hence in distribution. Multiplying the probability generating functions of the two independent random variables gives, for ,
Equivalently, the transient distribution of an M-M-infinity queue is
with independent summands. As , the binomial term converges to zero and the Poisson mean tends to . Therefore
which proves the stated large-time approximation.