Telephone numbers in India

Country Code: +91
International Call Prefix: 00

Fixed (landline) numbers

Subscriber Trunk Dialling (STD) codes are assigned to each city/town/village, with the larger Metro cities having shorter area codes (STD codes), the shortest being 2 digits. For example,

11 - New Delhi, Delhi
22 - Mumbai, Maharasthra
33 - Kolkata, West Bengal
44 - Chennai, Tamil Nadu
20 - Pune, Maharashtra
141 - Jaipur, Rajasthan
40 - Hyderabad, Andhra Pradesh
79 - Ahmedabad, Gujarat
80 - Bengaluru, Karnataka

Tier-2 Cities in India have STD code with 3 digits. For example,

512 - Kanpur, Uttar Pradesh
522 - Lucknow, Uttar Pradesh
120 - Ghaziabad, Uttar Pradesh

In fact, Kanpur and Lucknow are the two cities between which the first STD call of the country was made.

A full list of area codes in India is available with BSNL

Landline numbers are at most 8 digits long (usually in major metros). The total length of all phone numbers (STD code and the phone number) in India is constant at 10 digits, for example 7513200000 signifies a STD code i.e. 751 Gwalior & the phone number 3200000. Due to the availability of multiple operators offering fixed line services (either over wire or wireless), there is an operator-code for each telephone number, which is the first digit in the phone number. These are:

2 - BSNL and MTNL
3 - Reliance Communications
4 - Bharti Airtel
6 - Tata Indicom

Thus, a number formatted as 020-30303030 means a fixed-line Reliance number in Pune, while 011-20000198 is an MTNL fixed line in Delhi and 033-45229320 is an Airtel number in Kolkata, and 0758-2221434 is a BSNL number from Sagar.

No prefix is required to call from one landline to another in the same STD area. A prefix of "0+STD code" is required to dial from a landline phone in one STD code area to another. A prefix of "0+STD code" is required to dial from a mobile phone in India to any landline number, irrespective of STD area.

For example, to call a landline number in Delhi, one would have to dial

• from a land line in Delhi: only the required phone number
• from a land line in Mumbai: 011 and then the required phone number
• from a mobile phone anywhere in India: 011 and then the required phone number

There are some exceptions to this general rule for STD areas falling close to each other (within a radius of 200 kilometre), where "0" can be replaced with "95" e.g. to dial Delhi from Gurgaon, one dials 9511+landline number. This feature was stopped with effect from 00:00 hours of 10th March 2009, as per Department of Telecommunications memorandum dated 9th February 2009.

Mobile phone numbers

Main article: Mobile telephone numbering in India

Short Codes

There are many companies in the Indian market who rent keywords, on a monthly basis, whose characters, on a typical mobile phone keypad, represent short codes. Short codes are five digits in length and have to start with the digit '5' like 58888 as of 2007. Previously, they were four-digit in number and could be of any combination, like 8888 or 7827. The current five digits can be extended by three digits further representing 3 additional characters. Messages sent to these Short Codes are commonly referred to as Premium Rate SMS Messages and cost from Rs. 3 to Rs. 6 per message depending on the operator as well as the service.

International dialing

The international access code in India is 00 or +. For example, to call 08-790-1000 in Sweden from India, a subscriber would dial: 00 46 8 7901000 or + 46 8 7901000.

For calls to India from abroad, the appropriate international access code should be dialed, followed by 91 followed by the area code (without the 0) followed by the phone number. For example, to call 011-23456789 in India, from Europe, a subscriber would dial: 00 91 11 23456789 or + 91 11 23456789.

For example, to call a mobile phone number (98-93-012345) in India, from Europe, a subscriber would dial: 00 91 98 93 012345 or + 91 98 93 012345.

External links

• Department of Telecommunications, Government of India
• Telecom Regulatory Authority of India
• India National Numbering Plan of 2003