TRAI has made a significant decision to protect the public from scammers. It will now be easier to identify whether a call to your smartphone is for a company's service or a fraudulent one. TRAI has decided to introduce the 1601 number series for electricity, water, gas, LPG, and courier services. Companies will now use numbers in this series for their calls and transactions.

Helps in curbing fraud calls
Currently, banks, companies and other service providers make many calls from normal 10-digit numbers. This benefits scammers and cyber criminals. Scammers and cyber criminals call common people claiming to be from companies or government officials and defraud them. But this is going to stop now. Now, with the separate number series, it will be easier to identify calls from these organizations. Also, this decision of TRAI will help in curbing fraud calls coming from normal mobile numbers.

These companies will get 1601 numbers.
TRAI has decided to implement the 1601 series in phases. The first phase covers the public utilities, courier, and logistics sectors. This includes power distribution companies, water services, city gas companies, and LPG distributors. Additionally, courier, parcel delivery, express logistics, and freight companies will also be able to take advantage of this service.

Migration must be completed within 90 days.
Companies in the first phase must complete migration and onboarding to 1601 numbers within 90 days. Telecom companies will verify the respective companies before issuing numbers. This means that no one will be directly assigned a 1601 number.

No promotional calls will be made from the 1601 number.
TRAI has clearly stated that the 1601 number cannot be used for advertising or promotional calls. It will only be used for essential service and transaction-related calls.

What will be the impact on common citizens?

In fact, fraudulent calls received on our phones are a major problem for ordinary citizens. Scammers and cybercriminals used to trick people by using normal mobile numbers, claiming to be employees of a bank, Electricity Company, courier, or other company. But now, it's much easier to distinguish between genuine and fake calls thanks to the number series. However, don't blindly trust a call just because the phone number is '1601'. Never share OTPs, PINs, passwords, or banking information over the phone.

PC: Rochak Khabre