DoT earlier announced adding an extra ‘9’ to mobile numbers from January 2010, in order to increase the number capacity for future growth. And now, TRAI is planning to drop the 11 number plan and instead go for numbers from ‘2’ to ‘9’.
While existing mobile numbers will remain intact, this model will lead to all landline numbers having 10-digits. Trai officials are of the view that it is easier for the 40 million landline users to shift to a 10-digit format as against 510 million and growing mobile users moving to a 11-digit cellphone numbers. [ET]
India achieved it’s target of 500 million (by 2030) in 2009 itself and unlike other countries, we do not recycle the unused numbers back into the system, hence the ‘9’ numbers will go out of capacity in the next 2 years.
This is a better idea….