Two hundred million pre-paid mobile connections in the country are not active of which about 55 million have remained unused for more than six months, Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) said.
India had about 907 million mobile phone connections on September-end, according to Trai data, and more than one fifth of these are inactive. The regulator has proposed to put guidelines in place to disconnect non-active connections and free up bulk of these numbers for reuse.
Trai is also of the view that the industry needs uniform standards for disconnection since operators use different parameters. While some telcos cut off customers who don't use their mobile connections for 30 days, others have a 90-day deadline, with one operator even extending a six-month time frame for terminating unused connections, the regulator added.
Trai's upcoming guidelines will also state what constitutes usage. Currently, some operators say that customers will have to make at least one outgoing call while other mobile phone companies disconnect customers if they don't fail to activate recharge voucher within the prescribed time frame.
With about 6% of the country's mobile customers churning every month and with the probability of these SIMs getting reused being very low, the country's mobile phone number resources are fast getting exhausted.
Last year, the telecom department had abandoned its plans to move to 11-digit mobile numbers and instead decided to create additional capacity in '7' and 8' series. The mobile phone numbers of these series start with the digits 7 and 8, respectively.
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