Airtel removes '95' dialing from fixed line phones

BANGALORE, INDIA: Bharti Airtel Limited announced on Monday that it is withdrawing ‘95’ dialing for long distance calling on its fixed line service as per the directive from the Department of Telecom (DoT), Ministry of Communications and IT, Government of India.

This withdrawal came into effect from midnight of March 9, 2009, said a press release from Airtel.

Airtel’s fixed line customers will now be able to call these telephone numbers (earlier accessed through 95) by activating the STD facility and dialing the STD code of the respective city, prefixed with 0, it said.

Airtel is also providing its customers the convenience of not activating their STD facility but continuing to access the cities which are within 500 km of a telecom circle and less than 50 km of the adjoining SDCA.

They will need to dial the city STD code prefixed with 0. To access numbers outside of this perimeter, the customer will have to activate his STD facility by calling 121 from his Airtel fixed line number. The customer will continue to be billed for all calls as per the prevailing tariff, the release added.