Telecom Department Issued 13 Digit Numbers to M2M SIM Cards Operators

The telecom operators BSNL, Bharti Airtel, Reliance Jio, Idea Cellular and Vodafone will now have 13 digit numbers from 31st July, 2018 for testing. It will not have any impact on the cell phone numbers as it is only for M2M (machine2machine) SIM cards. This news led to rumors amongst mobile phone users that their existing number will be migrated to 13 digits mobile number which is literally hard to remember for anyone. These SIM cards would be for all those machines which require mobile network or internet for different applications. The Department of Telecom (DOT) notified that after the plan comes into effect i.e. from 31st July, 2018, the new connections will have 13 digit numbers. The DoT has set a deadline of 31st December 2018 for entire migration of existing M2M number into 13 digits. The M2M SIM cards are used in different applications like payment processing, smart parking, resource management, supply chain, fleet management, tracking objects and many more. The Telecom Authority of India suggested that critical M2M services will be provided by companies having licensed spectrum. If it gets implemented successfully, India will have longest mobile number of 13 digits.