Telcos ready for 8-digit landline numbers

MANILA, Philippines — The country’s two biggest telecommunications operators are all set to make the shift to the eight-digit landline number format starting Oct. 6.

The Ayala-led telco said all telephone numbers of Globe and Bayan customers in Greater Metro Manila with the 02 area code will move to an eight-digit format by the said date next month in compliance with the directive of the National Telecommunications Commission (NTC).

“We are ready to migrate all customers with landline in Greater Metro Manila to eight-digit telephone numbers. Our teams are continuously working closely with the NTC and other telcos to assist affected customers before, during and after the migration,” Globe general counsel Froilan Castelo said.

PLDT last July also announced its readiness for the migration from the existing seven-digit format to eight digits.

The NTC issued Memorandum Order 10-10-2017 in October last year directing all telecommunications companies in the country to migrate all customers within the area code 02 to eight-digit telephone numbers to ensure that there will be sufficient resource pool to cater to the rapid growth of landline customers in major cities.

The NTC assigned each telecom operator with a public telecommunications entity identifier (PTE) as an additional prefix to its phone number.

The assigned PTE identifier for Globe and its subsidiary Innove is 7, while Bayan Telecommunications has 3 as its PTE identifier.

For PLDT, the assigned PTE identifier is 8.

The respective PTEs of each telcos will just have to be added at the start of the existing landline numbers.

The NTC and local telcos scheduled the migration on Oct. 6 from 12 a.m. to 5 a.m.

Globe said during the period, affected customers may experience service interruption as telcos update their system to the new format.

The original migration date set by NTC was on March 18, 2019 but it was moved to a later schedule in response to petitions filed by the Bankers Association of the Philippines and Credit Card Association of the Philippines to give banks and credit card companies enough time to make the necessary adjustments.