Telecommunication number planning: Changing area codes causes losses to users

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 telephones had to change.

The reason is difficult to convince

On January 7, the Ministry of Information and Communications posted on its official website the reason for re-planning the landline area code 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 a series of provinces and cities would change the area code of the Mobile Phone, especially businesses that use the area code phone number associated with their brand such as taxi business, 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 leaflets, 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 trouble: changing the area code 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 old telephone. According to Mr. Nguyen Dinh Nam - Director of Intimex Xuan Loc Joint Stock Company, the change of area code or telephone number in unavoidable cases should be announced early on the media and information sent to subscribers at least 6 months in advance to have time to prepare, and at the same time help limit the waste in printing documents, forms, tables related to the old telephone 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 234, while Thanh Hoa is 237, Da Nang, geographically close to Thua Thien - Hue, has a new area code 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 to change the phone number on thousands of taxis, on documents, papers... cost up to billions of dong. The change of mobile phone area code from March 1, 2015 was more widespread, and almost affected most 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 HCMC area. A reader reported that his company has just printed more than 170,000 copies of paper packaging, bottle labels, posters, advertising leaflets, envelopes, letterhead, 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 cost will be unknown.

According to Labor