New interconnect charges put off

In that case, it will be the third time that the implementation of the new charges are put off. The revised interconnect charges will now come into effect some time in February.

The department of telecommunications has agreed to Trai's proposal to change telephone numbers of basic subscribers moving on to full mobility under the unified licence. It has allocated '93', '95' and '92' to Reliance, Tata and Bharti, respectively. The new scheme will be effective from February 1.

Earlier, Trai postponed the implementation of the new interconnect charges from December 1, 2003, to December 15 and subsequently to January 1, 2004, citing issues like numbering and routing of calls.

Recently, the regulator recommended that CDMA operators should change to a 10-digit numbering plan. But the latter have argued that changing the numbers will require some time because all networks across the country will have to be reprogrammed.