State-owned telecom majors Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd (BSNL) and Mahanagar Telephone Nigam Ltd (MTNL) have discontinued the group dialling facility across all telecom circles in the country.

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The move spells disaster for the already struggling landline phone segment, which has been recording a negative subscriber growth quarter on quarter.

The discontinuation follows allocation of the group dialling code — ‘95’ — to private mobile service providers like Aircel Cellular, Idea Cellular and Reliance Communications for their GSM operations.

Under group dialling, a BSNL subscriber could make calls up to 200 km from landlines by pre-fixing the code ‘95’ code to the number, which would be treated local calls and not as STD calls. MTNL, which has operations only in Mumbai and Delhi circles, had permitted users to make calls between these metros with the ‘95’ prefix at local call rates, not taking into consideration that these were inter-circle calls.

“The allocation of the ‘95’ code to private operators threw BSNL’s and MTNL’s group dialling services out of gear, as it resulted in a lot of confusion, over-lapping and wrong number dialling. Following this, the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) and the Department of Telecommunications (DoT) sought discontinuation of these services by the public sector units,” a top telecom ministry official said.

When contacted, BSNL and MTNL officials confirmed the development, but added that the services have been moved to the ‘0’ code level. In addition, both the public sector units are maintaining the group dialling rates.

“For example, a user can call Delhi from a Mumbai landline number using the STD code ‘011’, for which local call rates will still be charged. BSNL would also be charging the same rate for calls up to 200 km, even though ‘0’ has to be pre-fixed before the numbers,” an MTNL official said.

However, analysts see this as a death knell for the landline segment and, like many foreign countries, India could emerge as a place with ‘mobile-only homes’.

According to Trai data, the ever-declining wireline subscriber base fell further to 37.66 million in May 2009 from 37.81 million in April 2009.

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