DoT Allots 160 Numbering Series to Banks and Govt for Making Calls

The Department of Telecommunications (DoT) has allotted the 160 numbering series to banks and governments for making calls. Earlier, for any commercial purpose, be it a bank or another business, the calls were made from the 140 series. Now to distinguish between these, the telecom department has said that commercial businesses will get to make the calls from the 140 series while the banks and government calls will be made through the 160 series.

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This will better equip the consumer with the understanding of which calls he/she wants to pick and which to avoid. The rise in pesky calls and spam calls has troubled customers. Sometimes, users ignore important calls from banks seeing the caller number starting from 140 thinking that it is a spam business call. But with this differentiation, they can now easily understand which calls are super important for them and which calls they can comfortably ignore.

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All the central and state government entities will be using the 10-digit phone numbers in the following format – 1600ABXXX while the RBI, SEBI, IRDA, and PFRDA will be using the format – 1601ABCXXX for service calls.

Not only the customers, but the banks will also benefit from this move as connecting to customers will be a simpler and less tedious process now. In fact, the new 160 series will also ensure that customers do not fall prey to scam calls. Many fraudsters and scamsters have used this number series to trap Indian consumers in the past. Since the 160 series is only allocated to select entities, it will be impossible for the scamsters to use it and trap people.