The Nigerian Communications Commission has announced the assignment of new 357.53 million telephone numbers to telecommunications operators for subscription by users nationwide.
The commission, which made the disclosure in its Q3 2020 National Numbering Plan (NNP) released on Tuesday, indicated that the new telephones numbers and belonged to about 32 licensed telecom operators and were assigned to the telecommunication operators in the third quarter of 2020.
According to the telecommunications industry regulatory commission, the Numbering Plan is used to allocate a unique National Number to each subscriber connected to the national telephone system.
It also provides a uniform dialling procedure for local calls, national long distance calls, international calls as well as calls to emergency and special services.
The commission listed some of the operators with national and states licences as including 101 Communications, 21st Century Technologies, Airtel Networks, Airworld Technologies, Alpha Technologies.
Others are, Big Picture Nigeria, Broadbased Communications, CallMe Nigeria, Cedarview Communications, Cyberspace, EMTS Limited (9Mobile and FNL Engineering.
In line with the NNP template, the states and cities where some of the new telephone lines would be used by the operators are Lagos, Abuja, Enugu, Kano, Port Harcourt, Maiduguri, Owerri, Aba, Umuahia, Zaria, Jos, Awka, Umuahia, Uyo, Calabar, Ilorin, Kaduna and Kano, among others.
It would be recalled that the NCC had in June this year withdrawn 33.75 million telephone lines from some telecommunications operators and returned 7.49 million telephone lines to Nigerian Telecommunications Limited and three other operators.
Some of the defunct mobile operators whose phone lines were withdrawn then include Electronics Comms Incorporated, Mobitel Limited, M -TEL Communications Limited, Cyancom Limited former MTS 1st Wireless Limited, ChromeComm Limited and GiCell Wireless Limited.
