Soon users will have to pay for owning a phone number

According to a proposal by Telecom regulatory authority of India, users may soon have to pay a price for your landline or mobile number. The plan states that charges can be placed on mobile operators since phone numbers "represent an exceedingly valuable public resource which is not infinite." The plan then contemplates recovering these from users and determines whether to penalise operators that retain number resources that are not being used to their full potential.

The proposal read, "Simply adhering to strict criteria for assigning numbering resources might not ensure judicious and efficient use of freely allotted numbering resources by service providers. One way of ensuring judicious and efficient use of any finite public resource is by imposing charges, while allocating it. Efficient utilisation can be further ensured by introducing penal provision for those holding numbering resources with low utilisation."

Several countries have a similar fee levied for telephone numbers. While in some countries it is applicable on the mobile operator, in others subscribers bear the brunt of this charge. These countries as per Trai include Australia, Singapore, Belgium, Finland, the UK, Lithuania, Greece, Hongkong, Bulgaria, Kuwait, Netherlands, Switzerland, Poland, Nigeria, South Africa and Denmark.

The fee could be put in place either by imposing a one-time charge per number or through an annual recurring charge for each numbering resource allocated to the service provider, Trai said.