Emergency Calls Now Free From All Networks; “The Number Allocation and Administration Regulations, 2011” Issued By PTA

Today, a new directive was published from PTA for all the telecom operators in Pakistan. The directive states that all telecom operators are now bound to provide free emergency call services to their subscribers, purely on humanitarian grounds. Pakistan Telecommunication Authority stated this order in the renew copy of “The Number Allocation and Administration Regulations, 2011” which was issued recently.

The above mentioned emergency services include, Police Helpline, Fire Brigade, Ambulance services and some other specified services, the complete list will be sent to the operators by PTA and it will be updated by time to time.
PTA stated that the emergency codes like 15 or 1122 will only be allocated to the Government’s service organizations or the organizations providing philanthropic and humanitarian service all around the country or in provincial level. The regulation added that other than the above mentioned services, all other obligatory help lines or customer care center calls can be provided on the normal bases.

PTA also stated that if any licensee wants to request for geographic or non-geographic short codes, they can get them through the national numbering plan developed by PTA. These telephone numbers are national resources and they are not owned by any person or organization. So, the customers have right to enjoy the use of these numbers for legitimate purposes.

PTA will allocate Mobile Country Codes and Mobile Network Codes to the Cellular Mobile Operators and their Wireless Local Loop operators as well. The regulation stated that there will be 99 Numbering Plan areas with a unique National Destination Code against each. These number series will comprise of 10,000 to 100,000 blocks of numbers for all the cellular operators.

9 Digit Numbers In New Numbering Plan

The new numbering plan will be open numeric scheme and it will consist of 9 digit numbers. PTA will allocate the cellular subscriber with 8 digit numbers. For 2-digit NDC, subscriber will be allocated with 7 digits numbers and for 3-digid NCC, 6 digits numbers will be allocated to the subscriber.

• The structure of existing numbering plan shall be CC+NDC+SN.
• CC is Country Code which is 92 for Pakistan
• NDC is the National Destination Code such as “51” for Islamabad
• And SN is subscribers’ number of cellular operator.
• The code for mobile phone operators is 3 all over the country.
• The Issuer Identifier Number shall be issued to recognized operating agencies which are authority by PTA to issue SIM cards within Pakistan as per ITU-T recommendations.

You can download the PDF file for detailed view of PTA’s regulation from this link