India enroute to 11 digit mobile numbers

April 5th, 2009

India is moving towards to 11 digit mobile numbers from the existing 10 digit numbering system – reason: the 10 digit numbers are about to exhaust sometime next year!

Think about the population in India and the increasing number of mobile users !!

An interesting document to refer here is DoT (Department of Telecommunication – India)‘s National Numbering Plan – http://www.dot.gov.in/numbering_plan/nnp2003.pdf

1.4.2 At present 2-digit trunk codes being used are 11, 20, 22, 33, 40, 44, 79
and 80 (8 codes). When subscriber base in an SDCA expands beyond 4
crore, changeover from 10-digit N(S)N to 11-digit may be required.
However, this scenario is not envisaged almost for another 30 years.
Spare 2-digit trunk codes 39, 50, 60, 69 and 70 (5 codes) are available for
allotment to SDCAs with 3-digit code depending on the requirement.

If you can find the above in the NNP PDF document, DoT had a serious forecasting error !

The change is going to be for both GSM and CDMA based services running in the country !

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