Department of Telecom (DoT) announced plans in November 09 to add an extra nine to mobile numbers from January 2010 to increase capacity for growth. But now the TRAI is planning to keep the current 10-digit format but open up digits 2 to 9 for mobile numbers.

At present, over 90% of the mobile numbers begin with the digit 9 and others from 8.

According to the plan, the existing mobile numbers would stay, while all landlines will shift to 10-digits. The regulatory officials state that it is easier to change 40 million landline numbers as against 510 million mobile numbers.

Trai will arrange a process of discussion to know the position of the industry. All leading operators were against the DOT’s plan of adding an extra nine as they said it would be “next to impossible” as it requires massive technical changes to both software and mobile network configurations.

In India the operators do not reuse the numbers and the country had reached the mark of 500 million last year while using 700 million mobile numbers. Thus the mobile numbers starting with 9 will go out of capacity in the next 2 years. For the past three years India has been the world’s fastest growing cellular market adding 150 million new cellular customers every year.

The existing number plan was fixed in the year 2003 as it was thought then that India would achieve the mark of 500 million mobile customers only by 2030.

The proposal would see the use from 2 – 9 as 1 is saved for emergency services, toll free numbers and for government-related issues. Each digit can add 1 billion numbers to the system. The Cellular Operators Association of India proposes opening of just two additional levels as even with an efficiency of 60% the capacity would be expanded for 1,200 million more subscribers.

“If we open up all levels, say from digits 2-9, this will provide us with a further 8 billion mobile numbers. The Indian population will never exceed 1.5 billion and therefore this pool of numbers will never ever be exhausted,” the Trai official said.

The official cited the US example where the numbering format between mobile and landline numbers are the same and said that the proposal would enable India to implement a similar system.