In an attempt to reduce pesky calls, the telecom department has allocated 160 and 161 numbering series for transactional and service calls made by businesses for commercial purposes.
All central and state government entities shall use 10-digit phone numbers telephone numbers in the format of 1600ABCXXX whereas financial entities regulated by RBI, SEBI, IRDAI and PFRDA shall use 1601ABCXXX, the department of telecommunications (DoT) said in a notification late Tuesday.
Previously, only 140 number series were allocated for all kinds of commercial purposes. Post Tuesday’s mandate these will be classified into (140) marketing and (160 and 161) for service calls to easily identify the purpose of the caller.
ET had written about the upcoming mandate back in March.
The move is complementary to TRAI’s (telecom regulatory authority of India) recent recommendations for network operators as well as mobile device makers to enable display of caller’s name, both for personal phone numbers as well as enterprise callers.
The demarcation will largely benefit financial institutions such as bank to alert customers on use cases such as credit card payment reminders. Previously, subscribers had stopped receiving transactional calls assuming that a number originating from 140 would be spam.
But the new 160 and 161 series shall also ensure that subscribers do not fall prey to fraudsters dialling from personal SIMs to dupe recipients into believing that they were genuine bank representatives.
As per DoT’s notification, the 1600ABCXXX format shall be followed to allocate phone numbers, where XXX is any range between 000-999, AB shall represent the telecom circle such as Kolkata while C shall represent service provider such as Bharti Airtel.
Any other entity, besides government and financial institutions, who wishes to seek allocation under the said category will need to seek approval from the telecom regulator, the notification said.
