The mobile subscriber base across the country might see a drastic revision to 700 million from the current figure of close to 900 million as the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) is deliberating on whether to deactivate around 200 million phone numbers that are lying unused for more than 30 days.
According to Trai, a balance of close to R128 crore lies in these 200 million connections. Other options before the regulator include deactivating SIM cards that are not in use.
In order to arrive at the definition of an inactive SIM ? lack of incoming calls, outgoing calls, or text messages ? the regulator has sought the industry’s view on all these along with the period within which the inactivity should result in the cancellation of the number.
The stakeholders are expected to submit their views by December 21 and counter views by December 28.
The reason cited by the telecom regulator for deactivating SIMs is the increasing scarcity of new phone numbers. ?Mobile number series allocated to the wireless access service providers for provisioning of mobile numbers are becoming increasingly scarce because of a significant growth in the number of wireless connections coupled with the presence of a large number of competitive wireless access service providers. It has been observed that a significant number of wireless connections are not used for long periods of time. This results in avoidable blocking of scarce numbering resources,? the regulator explained in a consultation paper floated by it.
Among the questions it has posed to the service providers, the regulator has also asked if the balance on the SIM to be deactivated should be returned to the subscriber or should it be forfeited. Operators in the past have maintained that the balance shouldn’t be refunded as the clause incorporated in the contract between the service provider and the customer clearly says so.
The consultation paper comes in the backdrop of the department of telecommunications altering its criteria of allotting additional numbers from that of total subscribers to that of the active subscribers. This led the telecom companies to knock at the telecom regulator’s door, requesting for guidelines to deactivate the subscribers who weren’t active since they were blocking existing numbers.