Telecommunication number planning: Changing area codes, users suffer losses

The Ministry of Information and Communications (MIC) has just issued Circular 22/2014/TT-BTTTT on telecommunications number planning, effective from March 1, 2015. Accordingly, a series of local landline area codes will change. A large volume of transactions related to landlines, all transaction documents, advertising signs on media... must all be changed. The inconvenience to people and businesses is obvious.

A large volume of transactions involving landline phones had to change.

Unconvincing reasons

On January 7, the Ministry of Information and Communications posted on its official website the reason for re-planning the landline area codes in the master plan for telecommunications numbers. Specifically, the new plan will resolve the shortcomings of the old plan, such as the area code length being 2 or 3 digits (the old regulation was from 1-3 digits), the length of the landline subscriber number (DTCĐ) remains 7 or 8 digits. Two cities (Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City) will have a 2-digit area code; 61 provinces/cities will have a 3-digit length. The Ministry of Information and Communications believes that such a regulation will unify the length of the dialing number nationwide to 11 digits, instead of 10 digits for provinces and 11 digits for provinces as before, which is confusing and difficult for users to remember.

Circular 22 immediately received reactions from people and businesses. Many business representatives were surprised and quite confused by the fact that many provinces and cities would change the area code of the mobile phone, especially businesses that use the area code associated with their brands such as taxi businesses, gas retail, fast food ordering... Mr. Thanh Hung - CEO of Thanh Hung Taxi Company (Hanoi) expressed his concern about having to repaint 500 trucks, in addition to having to revise a series of flyers, billboards, and contracts. "In general, it is very inconvenient, causing trouble for businesses".

User adds one more damage

From now until March 1, less than 2 months, in the hustle and bustle of the pre-Tet season - hundreds of thousands of businesses have another worry and inconvenience: changing the area code of the mobile phone printed on documents, papers, billboards, vehicles...

It seems that there has not been much attention paid to the rights and costs that users have to bear in choosing the time to announce and apply the change of the area code of the mobile phone. According to Mr. Nguyen Dinh Nam - Director of Intimex Xuan Loc Joint Stock Company, the change of area code or phone number in case of unavoidable circumstances should be announced early on the media and information sent to subscribers at least 6 months in advance to have time to prepare, at the same time helping to limit waste in printing documents, forms, tables related to the old phone area code.

VNPT telephone operator. Illustration photo

Some readers knowledgeable about telecommunications raised the question: Why not take advantage of this change to unify the 3-digit area codes starting from 201 to 263 (63 provinces and cities) and follow the rule of increasing or decreasing numbers from North to South to make it easier to remember and avoid confusion? Just looking at the new planning area code table of 13 provinces and centrally-run cities, it is quite "messy", for example, Quang Ninh changed to 203, Ca Mau went up to 290 but Can Tho is 292; Thua Thien - Hue has a new code of 234, while Thanh Hoa is 237, Da Nang, geographically close to Thua Thien - Hue, has a new area code of 236...

In 2008, when VNPT changed the mobile phone number by adding the number 3 before the existing phone numbers, Mai Linh Taxi Company said that the cost of changing the phone numbers on thousands of taxis, on documents, papers... cost up to billions of VND. The change of mobile phone area codes from March 1, 2015 took place more widely, and affected almost all organizations and businesses using mobile phones.

According to Mr. Ta Long Hy - Deputy General Director of Vinasun Taxi, this company will have to spend at least 70 million VND to re-stick the phone number decals for about 4,000 taxis in the Ho Chi Minh City area. A reader reported that his company has just printed more than 170,000 copies of paper packaging, bottle labels, posters, advertising leaflets, envelopes, letterheads, signs... to use for many months or even the whole year of 2015, but with the change in phone number area codes, from March 1, those printed documents will become scrap paper or waste and will have to spend more money to reprint them. If this cost is multiplied by about 500,000 operating businesses, the level of expense will be unknown.

According to Labor