Recently, David (name changed), a media professional, received a text message offering ₹30,000 for his Airtel number, which he has been using for over a decade.
The number belonged to a series starting with 98950, which is no longer offered by the network service provider. Though he turned the offer down, there could be many open to it considering the trying pandemic times.
Similar enticing offers for mobile phone numbers, especially from old series, are being made without the knowledge of service providers.
“Such messages fall under the category of unsolicited commercial communications and are not legally permissible. Officially, numbers surrendered by a user go to the common number pool of the service providers who alone have the right to reassign them,” said a technical official of BSNL.
Every service provider has a series of numbers identified with them and are considered iconic. For BSNL, it’s the series starting with 9447 and 9446, while it is 98470 for IDEA, previously Escotel, and 98460 for BPL and now Vodafone. These series are now exhausted, after the threshold of numbers that could be assigned were reached, and are no longer available.
Such numbers are not even available through the auction of fancy numbers or random-choice of preferred numbers offered by the service providers. Interestingly, most of the service providers seem unaware of such unofficial transfer of numbers involving monetary benefits.
“We haven’t yet come across such a sale of mobile numbers. In fact, no mobile service provider permits it. But such transactions could indeed be taking place since even illegal telephone exchanges were thriving here,” said an official of IDEA.
With the buyer and seller most often on the same page, there is little scope for complaints and the subsequent penal measures. The authorities at the Telecom Enforcement and Resource Monitoring (TERM) cell, of the Department of Telecom that deals with malpractices, haven’t received any such complaint.
However, they admit that such sale of numbers could be taking place.
“A person using the in-demand mobile number could surrender it and alert the buyer who could then straight away request for it. Since the service providers are open to assigning available numbers upon request, he may get hold of it quite easily while the monetary transaction involved may go undetected,” said TERM sources.
