Recently the whole world felt the shock of the global recession and everywhere the impacts were felt. It seems that the Indian Telecom sector continues to grow in leaps and bounds in spite of the huge tsunami of the recession. Recently the Department of Telecommunications has officially announced that it has run out of mobile numbers starting with nine.
So, people might ask what next? Soon, mobile phone companies are going to start issuing mobile numbers starting with the number eight. Some of the users may feel uncomfortable with the new set of numbers but with the recent surge in the mobile market, this is a last-ditched effort to feed the ever-increasing demand for new connections in India.
Moreover, the telecom sector previously had 95 sub-level telephone numbers, which were reserved for trunk calls and now these numbers are being allotted to the cellular operators. It is expected that the mobile operators will be able to expand their business a bit further with the influx of new numbers. There is speculation that some of the unique numbers will be auctioned off to the newly opened rural market.
Cellular telecom companies make a huge amount of money by auctioning off special numbers to Businessmen and politicians. Mobile industry insiders have suggested that people will take time to get accustomed to the new eleven-digit mobile numbers instead of the usual ten-digit ones. There are ten crore new numbers being launched and this will help the telecom industry feed the growing number of mobile subscribers. According to TRAI, India boasted 415 million cellular subscribers at the end of the year 2009 compared to 277 million, a year ago.
The new eleven-digit numbering will be available to both the CDMA and the GSM numbers, the cellular companies are yet to come out with a method to implement the new system. So if you are planning on getting a new number, wait for some time and you may catch the first batch of the eleven-digit numbers. Previously the National Numbering plan had commented that they have no plans to shift to the eleven-digit mode in the near future and that was only in the year 2003! So you can well see the rate at which the consumers of India are using their mobiles. The hardware is generally hardcoded for ten-digit numbers so it will take some time to change or tweak the system.
