Calls from landlines to mobiles will be dialed with the prefix ‘0’ from January 15

NEW DELHI: Landline phone users should enter the prefix ‘0’ to dial any mobile phone number in the country since January 15, the communications ministry said in an official statement on Wednesday.
The department accepted the recommendation of sector regulator Trai to have the prefix ‘0’ for such calls, a measure that will create enough numbering space for telecom services.
There will be no changes in the dialing plan from landline to landline, from mobile to landline and from mobile to mobile callsthe ministry said.

In addition, he pointed out that a suitable announcement will be made for it, which will be played whenever a subscriber dials a call from landline to mobile without prefixing ‘0’.
A total of approximately 2,539 million numbering series is expected to be generated from the previous plan. This will free up enough numbering resources for future use, allowing more connections to be added in the future, which will be beneficial to mobile customers in general.
In May, Trai 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.