Department of Telecommunications (DOT) has issued four providers to assign 10-digit numbers beginning with "8".

Reason : A swelling subscriber pool and an increasing number of service providers. Almost 15 years after mobile telephony came to India, the number of subscribers crossed 441 million in August-end, and is growing by 14 to 15 million every month. Pre-empting a crunch, the DoT has allowed Vodafone Essar, Idea Cellular, Tata Teleservices and Reliance-ADAG (for CDMA and GSM services) to allot numbers beginning with '8'. Tata Teleservices has been given permission for the Mumbai circle.

Reliance Communications on Wednesday launched its new series of GSM mobile numbers from '8 'instead of the usual '9' in the circle of Delhi NCR. The numbers in the new series of '8010xxxxxx 'will be available for pre-paid and postpaid GSM platforms, a company statement.

or over 15 years, India has been using mobile numbers from '9 xxxxxxxx ". But with the phenomenal growth of mobile phones with over one crore subscribers being added every month, the Department of Transportation to the depletion of 10-digit mobile numbers.