Vodacom and MTN have received numbers in the 072 and 073 ranges with immediate effect. Vodacom will be able to assign numbers in the 0721 and 0722 fields, and MTN has received the 0731 and 0732 ranges.
"The assignment of these access codes to Vodacom and MTN, by SATRA, is in line with the national numbering plan that is being developed by SATRA, in broad consultation with the industry," the regulator said in a statement.
The South African Telecommunications Regulatory Authority (SATRA) says the operators can use the additional four million numbers only for their prepaid customers, as they indicated their need to be in the prepaid market. Public affairs manager Kotli Molise says the allocation of the numbers also comes linked to a condition that short numbers (seven digit numbers for special services) be strictly confined.
Using a seven digit number removes 10 000 possible full-length numbers from the usable range.
Molise says there was little regulation on numbering structures when the cellular operators first started their services, as even the most optimistic projections were for a small number of users only. But huge growth in the cellular market has changed that. "History has shown us that we need to take care of this resource, that it is a scarce national treasure," she says.
Joan Joffe, group executive for Vodacom corporate affairs, says her company was coming dangerously close to running out of numbers to allocate. Vodacom is happy to use the new range only for prepaid customers, as this is the area where most of its growth occurs. Joffe says there is no plan to move prepaid users out of the 082 range, and that the Vodacom billing system can handle the new ranges with immediate effect.
The third cellular operator, which still has to be finalised, will have to settle for the 084 number range when it starts up its own service. Molise says MTN and Vodacom had to motivate their request before an allocation was even considered, and the same will go for any other player.
"Numbers are not a right, they will get them as there is a need for it," she says.
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