NEW DELHI, INDIA: Bharti Airtel Limited announced the withdrawal of ‘95’ dialing for long distance calling on its fixed line service as per the directive from Department of Telecom (DoT), Ministry of Communications and IT, Government of India. This withdrawal came into effect from midnight of March 9, 2009.

Airtel’s fixed line customers would now be able to call telephone numbers (those were earlier accessed through 95) by activating STD facility and dialing city STD code prefixed with 0. For example – to call Delhi, customers in Gurgaon would need to dial 011 instead of 9511.

Airtel would also provide the option of not activating their STD facility but continuing to access the cities which were within 500 kms of a telecom circle and less than 50 kms of the adjoining SDCA. They would need to dial city STD code prefixed with 0.

Inorder to access numbers outside of this perimeter, customer would have to activate his STD facility by calling 121 from Airtel's fixed lined number. The service provider also announced that customers would be continued to be billed for all calls as per the prevailing tariff.