TRAI Orders Telcos to Deactivate Inactive Numbers

Today customers make use of multiple SIM cards for communication. This is where the mobile companies could gain the market edge introducing phones with dual SIM facility. In this context, the consumers using dual connections usually tend to leave one or more of their connections unused for months.

Surveys surprisingly reveal that the inactive pre-paid mobile connections accounted to 200 million and unused connections accounted to 55 million. The connections were found to be unused for more than six months.

TRAI, the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India has plans to take an active step towards minimizing such unwanted usage. TRAI is set to disconnect inactive mobile connections so that the 10-digit mobile number series can be fitted in with more subscribers.

A connection which stays idle for 30 days usually gets disconnected. Meanwhile certain operators give a grace period of 90 days before terminating the connection. To avoid this, all a user needs to do is to make a call or in the least recharge his pre-paid account with any package available.

India's telephone subscriber base now has 939.57 million connections according to DoT, The Department of Telecommunications. Dot stated that the number showed an increase of 4.42 per cent over the previous year.

As a result, the teledensity in India rose to 77.28 per cent in 2011, an increase of 2.32 per cent over the previous year. Excluding the unused connections from the subscribers list, user base accounted to 899.78 million in August 2011. On other hand, sources reveal that the user base of wireline connections fell from 34.1 million in August 2011 to 31.2 million in 2012.