Mobile telephone numbering in India

The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) has divided India into various cellular zones such that within each zone, the call is treated as a local call, while across zones, it becomes a long-distance call. A cellular zone (or cellular circle) is normally the entire state, with a few exceptions like Mumbai (which is a different zone), Goa (which is a part of the Maharashtra zone) or Uttar Pradesh (which is so big it was divided into multiple zones)

From 20th May 2005, calls between Mumbai Metro & Maharashtra Telecom Circle, Chennai Metro & Tamilnadu Telecom Circle, Kolkata Metro & West Bengal Telecom Circle and UP (East) & UP (West) Telecom Circle Service Areas are merged in Inter service area connectivity. With the above arrangement, calls within a State in the above-mentioned four States would be treated as intra-service area call for the purposes of routing as well as Access Deficit Charges (ADC). The dialling procedure for calls within a State for these States would also be simplified i.e. dialling of mobile-to mobile subscribers and fixed-to-mobile subscribers would be without prefixing '0'. Ref : DoT Notice

All mobile numbers in India have the prefix 9 (This includes pager services, but the use of pagers is on the decline). Each zone is allowed to have multiple private operators (earlier it was 2 private + BSNL, subsequently it was changed to 3 private + BSNL in GSM 900/1800, now it also includes 2 private + BSNL in CDMA). All cellphone numbers are 10 digits long, (normally) split up as OO-AA-NNNNNN where OO is the operator code, AA is the zone code assigned to the operator, and NNNNNN is the subscriber number.

Numbering plan

Mobile Phone Numbers, Operator and Circle

Telecom Circles

CELLULAR OPERATOR