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With wider choices, lower rates
and the emergence of new wireless mobile services, more than four in five
people in Singapore today subscribe to mobile phone services. This rapid
growth of mobile phone usage is fast depleting the current pool of unused
mobile phone numbers beginning with '9'.
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The Infocomm Development Authority
of Singapore (IDA) is gearing up for this continued growth and will issue new
phone numbers beginning with digit '8' to mobile phone operators by end March
2004. This new number range will complement the existing mobile phone numbers
with prefix '9'.
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Announcing this at the Wireless
Java Jam 2004 event earlier today at Victoria Theatre, IDA's Chief Executive
Officer, Mrs Tan Ching Yee highlighted the need to introduce a new number
range. Said Mrs Tan, "With new services, like wireless email access,
multimedia messaging, even video telephony coming our way, we can expect our
existing pool of mobile numbers to run dry."
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Today, only 160,000 mobile phone
numbers starting with '9' are left. Aside from mobile phone services, numbers
starting with '9' are also used for emergency, paging and trunked radio
services.
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In Singapore, since the
telecommunication market was liberalised in April 2000, mobile phone
penetration has increased from 54% (1.7 million subscribers) to the present
83% (3.4 million subscribers). In fact, according to an IDC forecast, the
number of mobile subscribers in Asia Pacific is set to rise from 421 million
in 2003 to 683 million in 2007.
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The move to introduce mobile phone
numbers with prefix '8' will create 10 million new numbers that IDA will
gradually distribute to mobile phone operators (i.e. SingTel Mobile, MobileOne
and StarHub Mobile). The respective operators will announce details of when
these numbers will be available to their subscribers at a later date.
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As the new mobile numbers
beginning with '8' will work in the same way as existing numbers beginning
with '9', users need not change any settings on their mobile phones or
purchase new handsets to support the new mobile phone numbers.
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Companies or organisations that
use PABX systems, Key Telephone Systems and multi-line systems should check
with their vendors if any system reconfiguration is needed to support the
mobile numbers starting with '8'.
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For a list of vendors supplying
such equipment and further information on mobile phone numbers with prefix '8'
please refer to the IDA website http://www.ida.gov.sg/idaweb/pnr,
under the sections, "Spectrum & Numbering" / "Number
Information" / "New Mobile Number Range".
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Infocomm Development Authority
of Singapore (IDA) News Release 8 Jan 2004
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IDA issues mobile phone numbers starting with '8'
