The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India has divided India into various cellular zones such that within each zone, the call is treated as a local call, while across zones, it becomes a long-distance call. A cellular zone (or cellular circle) is normally the entire state, with a few exceptions like Mumbai, Chennai & Kolkata (which are different zones than their respective states), Goa (which is a part of the Maharashtra zone), Chhattisgarh (which is part of Madhya Pradesh), Jharkhand (which is a part of the Bihar zone) or Uttar Pradesh (divided into multiple zones). Delhi is a unique circle because it includes towns from Haryana and Uttar Pradesh as well.
From May 20, 2005, calls between Mumbai Metro and Maharashtra Telecom Circle, Chennai Metro and Tamil Nadu Telecom Circle, Kolkata Metro and West Bengal Telecom Circle and Uttar Pradesh (East) and Uttar Pradesh (West) Telecom Circle Service Areas are merged in Inter service area connectivity. With the above arrangement, calls within a State in the above-mentioned four States would be treated as intra-service area call for the purposes of routing as well as Access Deficit Charges (ADC). The dialing procedure for calls within a State for these States would also be simplified i.e. dialling of mobile-to mobile subscribers and fixed-to-mobile subscribers would be without prefixing '0'.[1][broken citation]
All mobile numbers in India have the prefix 9, 8 or 7 (This includes pager services, but the use of pagers is on the decline). Each zone is allowed to have multiple private operators (earlier it was 2 private + BSNL/MTNL, subsequently it was changed to 3 private + BSNL/MTNL in GSM 900/1800, now each zone has more than 10 operators including BSNL/MTNL. All mobile phone numbers are 10 digits long. The way to split the numbers is defined in the National Numbering Plan 2003 as XXX-YY-NNNNN where XXX is the Network operator, YY is the Mobile Switching Center and NNNNN is the subscribe numbers.
Contents[hide] |
