New Mobile Number Series Launched To Identify Legitimate Service, Transactional Calls: All About It

The Centre announced on Thursday (31 May) the introduction of a new numbering series, 160xxxxxxx, specifically for making service or transactional calls.

This move aims to help citizens easily identify legitimate calls and reduce unsolicited voice calls from telemarketers using regular 10-digit mobile numbers.

Currently, the 140xxxxxxx series is allocated to telemarketers for making promotional, service, or transactional voice calls.

In a statement, the Department of Telecommunications (DoT) stated that the extensive use of the 140xx series for promotional calls has led consumers to frequently ignore such calls, resulting in many important service or transactional calls being missed.

"This has resulted in the wide use of regular 10-digit numbers by genuine entities for making service/transactional calls. This also gave opportunity to fraudsters to deceive consumers using 10-digit numbers," the DoT added.

To address this issue, the DoT has allocated the new 160xxxxxxx series exclusively for service and transactional voice calls by principal entities.

This clear differentiation between service/transactional calls and other types of calls is expected to help citizens better manage their communication.

The DoT emphasised that telecom service providers (TSPs) must ensure adequate verification of every entity before assigning a number from the 160 series.

The entities will also be required to undertake that these numbers will be used solely for service and transactional calls.

For any suspected fraud communications, citizens can report it on the Chakshu facility at Sanchar Saathi (www.sancharsaathi.gov.in).

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