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The arrangement for dialing and routing of calls from mobile-to-mobile and fixed-to-mobile in the metro district of Kolkata, Chennai and Mumbai and their corresponding remaining parts of the States and for service areas of Uttar Pradesh (East) and Uttar Pradesh (West) are different when compared to other States in India. This difference arose due to historical reasons. Initially, licenses for mobile services were granted in the four metro cities of Chennai, Delhi, Kolkata and Mumbai. Subsequently, mobile services licenses were granted in telecom circles. Thus, there is separate mobile service licence for metro cities of Kolkata, Chennai and Mumbai and their corresponding remaining parts of the States. Historically, Uttar Pradesh Telecom Circle was divided in two parts namely Uttar Pradesh (East) and Uttar Pradesh (West). This meant that for calls between these service areas, one has to prefix “0” before the mobile number and such calls were treated as STD calls.
The Government has decided to remove this difference in pubic interest. For this purpose, inter-service area connectivity between access providers in the above mentioned States has been permitted. However, the Access Providers will operate within their existing licensed service areas and shall not be permitted to create infrastructure outside their licensed service areas for the purpose of inter-service area connectivity. The Access Providers may take lease lines for such connectivity. This inter-service area connectivity shall be only for terminating traffic. The dialling 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’. With the above arrangement, calls within a State in the above-mentioned four States would be treated as non-STD calls and the subscribers would not be required to prefix “0”.
With this decision, the long pending demand of public for rationalization of treatment of calls in these areas has been addressed and it is expected that mobile customers will be benefited by the removal of STD charges, which would lead to further growth of mobile services in these areas.
Department of Telecom
New Delhi, May 21,2005,31Vaisakha 1927
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