India's telecommunications regulator expanded the use of the 1600 number series beyond the banking, financial, and insurance sector (BFSI) on Monday, incorporating utilities, courier, and logistics companies. These organizations will utilize the 1601 series for transactional and service calls, which will help consumers distinguish legitimate callers from fraudsters.
As part of the first phase of the expansion plan, the 1601 series will be issued to electricity distribution companies, water supply services, city gas distribution companies, liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) suppliers, and other utility providers. Courier, express logistics, parcel delivery services, as well as freight and logistics operators involved in cargo delivery will also gain the right to use the 1601 series.
Telecommunication companies must issue these numbers within 90 days of verifying the organization's compliance and ensuring that the 1601 series numbers are used exclusively for service and transactional calls, strictly prohibiting promotional voice calls. The number series will not be provided to intermediaries or aggregators who provide platforms for such services.
The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) stated in its Monday announcement that this separate series was introduced for sectors outside of BFSI and Government to prevent the mixing of critical financial calls with service and transactional calls from other industries, given the critical and sensitive nature of communications in the BFSI and Government sectors.
This measure is expected to be an important tool in combating impersonation by fraudsters who use ordinary ten-digit numbers and falsely represent themselves as legitimate businesses. According to a recent TRAI report, up to 1.15 billion calls were received from the allocated 1600 series numbers in the first quarter of the fiscal year 2026-27.
Previously, TRAI had already mandated the use of the 1600 series numbers for calls related to transactions and services from the banking, financial, and insurance sector, as well as for government communications to citizens. This regulator introduced these series earlier this year. Recently, TRAI cautioned call management and user applications against marking the 1600 number as potential spam, following an incident with Truecaller, which marked numbers from the 1600 series and another series 140, intended only for promotional calls, often with community-created blocks.
TRAI asserted that the 1600 number series is used by regulated organizations in the BFSI sector, including entities regulated by the Reserve Bank of India (RBI), Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi), Insurance Regulatory and Development Authority (Irdai), and Pension Fund Regulatory and Development Authority (PFRDA), for communicating with existing customers, as well as by government bodies to interact with citizens.
This clarification came amid requests from BFSI organizations to TRAI to ensure that the calls they make to customers are not blocked by platforms.
