Customers won't be charged for holding multiple SIMs, says Trai

The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) has not proposed introducing fees for mobile and landline numbers to ensure the efficient allocation and use of these finite resources, the regulator clarified on Friday.

The regulator quelled speculations that it intends to impose charges on customers for holding multiple SIMs or numbering resources.

Aiming to create a sustainable pool of new phone numbers for the country's nearly 1.2 billion and rising mobile phone connections, Trai last week issued a consultation paper on revising the National Numbering Plan. With a tele-density of 85.69 per cent as of March 31, 2024, it expects the current total of 1,199.28 million telephone subscribers to continue rising.

In 2003, the Department of Telecommunications (DoT) conducted a comprehensive review and revision of the national number plan to accommodate the rapid increase in subscribers.

 

Subsequently, the National Numbering Plan 2003, was designed to allocate numbering resources for 750 million telephone connections across the country.

The plan aims to assess all factors affecting the allocation and utilisation of TI resources and proposes potential modifications to enhance the allocation policies and utilisation procedures, ensuring an adequate reservoir of TI resources.

In the same consultation paper, Trai highlighted the global practice of charging for Telecommunication Identifier (TI) numbers by the governments, and pointed out the Telecom Act, 2013 gives the Centre power to allot TI after imposing charges.

It had argued that imposing charges is one way of 'ensuring judicious and efficient use of any finite public resource'. "The ownership of the numbering space resides with the government, granting service providers usage rights over the designated number resource during the tenure of their licenses. It is evident that numbers represent an exceedingly valuable public resource which is not infinite," it had said.

The allocation of numbering resources in some of the countries worldwide is done on a chargeable basis, covering various categories such as mobile numbering resources, vanity numbers, and numbers for national interest, it had said.

However, Trai has taken a different stance since then. "Trai has consistently been advocative of minimum regulatory intervention promoting forbearance and the self-regulation of market forces," it added.