The Communications Regulation Commission (CRC) granted Bulgaria’s biggest cellphone operator Mobiltel a new dialling code and two blocks of a million phone numbers each. In addition to the 88 dialling code it already uses, Mobiltel was granted use of the 98 code. The two million new numbers will start with the 988 and 989 prefixes.

The regulator's decision was published on its website on October 6 and dated September 19, coming nearly ten months after Mobiltel, which operates under the M-Tel brand, put in a request for additional numbers.

In 2007, the regulator rejected Mobiltel’s request for the vacant code, saying that the telecom was only using 60 per cent of the numbers allocated to it at that time.

The operator argued that with five million subscribers, one million SIM cards on sale, another million for internal systems synchronisation and yet more used to provide data services, it was running low on resources.

Mobiltel challenged the regulator’s refusal in court and requested additional numbers for a second time at the end of July. The operator said it was mulling over launching new services with the new codes but declined to elaborate further.

The resource will not be used for new SIM cards because the old capacity has not been depleted, the firm said. The CRC will allocate two million numbers for Mobiltel’s rivals, Globul and Vivatel, although neither has requested additional numbers.

Source: Dnevnik.bg