Consumer Council unveils mobile number mixing mystery The Consumer Council of Fiji has warned Vodafone and Inkk customers to be cautious when calling numbers outside the respective networks as they may be losing out on purchased credit, especially during promotions. The call comes as the Consumer Council established there is a mixing of numbers between Inkk and Vodafone. It is widely known that Inkk users carried mobile numbers ranging with prefix of 8X, while Vodafone mobile numbers ranged from prefix 9X. But due to mixing of numbers, both Vodafone and Inkk mobile numbers have prefixes 8X and 9X, said council CEO Premila Kumar in a news conference today. The councils audit on mobile number allocation shows Inkk mobile numbers start with 95, 96, 98, 84, and 87 prefix while Vodafone numbers start with 80, 83, 86, 89, 90, 91, 92, 93, 94, 97 and 99. We are concerned that there is no pattern or sequence in the allocation of these numbers, which consumers can remember easily and differentiate Inkk numbers from Vodafone. Inkk mobile numbers appear to be allocated in a broken sequence, Kumar said. This is unfair, misleading and a matter of grave concern to the council as mixing of numbers is causing confusion among mobile phone users at large. The council has spent the past two months addressing the issue with Inkk and Vodafone which has prompted the two mobile carriers to disclose their number ranges in the fine print at the bottom of advertisements and other promotional material. But Kumar says this is not adequate as those in rural areas, the elderly and those who are not able to read will not be aware of these sequences of numbers. She has suggested Vodafone and Inkk incorporate a beep at the beginning of a call to make users aware when they are calling to another network. Inkk general manager sales and marketing Chandima Gunawardana in a letter to the Consumer Council dated 3 September, and released today by the council, said Inkk was only a Mobile Virtual Network Operator and did not own our own network but rather utilise the network infrastructure of Vodafone Fiji to provide our services. Gunawardana added they had highlighted the issue with Vodafone which it said was also working with the Telecommunications Authority of Fiji (TAF) to find a workable solution that addresses this concern. The issue apparently is due to a lack of sufficient stock of available numbers made available to Vodafone Fiji by TAF who have to manage the number allocation within the limited range available, Gunawardana added. RICARDO MORRIS
Posted on: Wed, 12 Nov 2014 00:56:16 +0000
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