Callers now must add the prefix ‘0’ to make calls from landlines to mobile phones in the country starting January 15, the Department of Telecommunications confirmed on Wednesday.
The telecommunications department has been asking telcos to make the necessary arrangements before January 1 to implement the new system. The decision is made in order to free up enough numbering resources for future use.
Taking into account the TRAI Recommendation on “Ensuring Adequate Numbering Resources for Fixed Line and Mobile Services”, the DoT has made the decision to implement the following:
-All calls from landline to mobile will be dialed with the prefix ‘0’ as of January 15, 2021.
-There will be no changes in the dialing plan for calls from landline to landline, from mobile to landline and from mobile to mobile.
-A suitable announcement will be made for it. This announcement will be played whenever a subscriber dials a call from landline to mobile without prefixing ‘0’.
-All landline subscribers will have the ‘0’ dialing feature.
“A total of approximately 2.539 million numbering series is expected to be generated from the above. This will free up sufficient numbering resources for future use,” the telecommunications ministry said in a statement.
With the release of sufficient numbering resources, more connections can be added in the future, which will be beneficial for mobile customers in general.
The above changes have been made to minimize inconvenience for subscribers and free up essential numbering resources, the statement added.
DoT in a circular on “modifying the dialing pattern from landline numbers to cellular mobile numbers” said that to ensure adequate numbering resources for mobile and landline services, the Department has accepted Trai’s recommendations dated 29 de May 2020.
“The following can be implemented … Calls from landline to mobile will be dialed with the prefix ‘0’. A suitable announcement can be placed on landline switches to inform landline subscribers of the dialing requirement the prefix ‘0’ for all calls from landline to mobile, “said DoT in a circular dated November 20.
It is pertinent to mention here that the Telecommunications Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) in May this year recommended dialing the prefix ‘0’ for a call from a landline number to a mobile number.
However, the regulator had stated that introducing a dialing prefix for a particular type of call is not equivalent to increasing the number of digits in the phone number.
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