An Extra ‘9’ to your Mobile Number from January 2010? [11 Digit Mobile Number]
DoT, after exhausting numbers starting with ‘9’ launched the ‘8’ series (earlier story: Indian Mobile Growth Story – ‘9? Exhausted, New Numbers to Begin with 8) and is now planning to move from 10 digit to 11 digit by prefixing the numbers with ‘9’ (as per ToI).
As per the report, the extra ‘9’ can be added as early as January 2010, though that doesn’t seem feasible since that would involve consultation with industry players/operators.
11 digit mobile number
Given India’s telecom growth (Telecom Subscription in India has crossed 500 million mark), it’s expected that the country will reach 1 billion subscribers by 2014 and the move to add an extra digit will help in increasing the numbering capacity.
The repercussion to this change will be huge – right from updating one’s contact book to filling up forms (banks/any form which has mobile number) and whole lot of infrastructure will need to be revisited. We hope that the discussion is still in premature stage, so that other stakeholders can raise their concern/plan accordingly.
What’s your take?
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Related posts:
- No 11 Digit Mobile Numbers -TRAI
- Mobile Numbers Starting with ‘8’are in – Reliance launches 8010 series in NCR
- Telecom News: 16.67 Million Wireless Connections Added in October, Mobile Number Portability by December 31st
- Indian Mobile Growth Story – ‘9′ Exhausted, New Numbers to Begin with 8
- Reliance to Bring Sachet Pricing for Mobile VAS
About the author - Manish is an engineering student and is currently working on his startup idea.
In consumers view, this is going to be quite annoying.
Given the fact that we have got number portability, going for 8 series is better than moving to a 11 digit number. This would atleast save the unnecessary confusion to the 500 million population.
Wouldnt it be better for everyone if the DoT simply dereserves the 92 (Tata), 93 ( Reliance), 94 (BSNL) number series. The current policy has reserved 30% of the available numbers in the 9x series for operators with less than 30% market share. In any case the number reservation plan is useless once we have number portability in place.
BTW, 80,81 & 88 series are already operational (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mobile_telephone_numbering_in_India)
The market share data mentioned above is rough approximation based on P 72 of the TRAI report: http://www.trai.gov.in/WriteReadData/trai/upload/Reports/48/IndicatorReport1oct09.pdf)