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MUMBAI, Dec. 16

DOES assignment of the same prefix number `2' to both Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd (BSNL) and Mahanagar Telephone Nigam Ltd (MTNL) telephone numbers across the country indicate a more-than-mild intent on the part of the Government to merge the two?

Many officials in the telecom industry — the Government as well as private — think so. ``It is clear that by providing the same prefix number, they are at least keeping all options open and convenient, should there be a merger. They are providing all the room for it.''

BSNL has around 35 million landlines across the country; MTNL has 5 million in Delhi and in Mumbai. ``They have been assigned the same prefix number. However, other private companies who only have a couple of lakh lines each or have not even started operations are being assigned exclusive prefix numbers,'' said one official.

Hughes Tele.com (soon to be renamed Tata Teleservices Maharashtra Ltd) has numbers starting with `5'. The official pointed out that Reliance Infocomm is getting prefix number `3' for its telephone services across the country.

``When operators who have barely started operations or have not even started operations are getting exclusive numbers, how can the two largest operators get the same number,'' said an official.

Some government officials in the Telecom Ministry said the deciding factor was simply that `2' was assigned to the two state-owned operators and that in any case the two operators do not have overlapping territories. ``It does not indicate anything much,'' said one of them.

But many telecom officials are not buying this. ``Would they give the same prefix number to two different private operators if their territories did not overlap? That would be the test,'' they said.

The Government telecom officials said they foresee serious problems in privatising the listed company MTNL. ``More than anything else, MTNL has 60,000 employees for just Delhi and Mumbai. Private companies run all India operations with just 5,000. What would be done about them.'' If they were to be transferred back to other Telecom Ministry concerns, how would it become viable to absorb them without the ``creamy earnings'' of MTNL?

The problems of merging a listed company with an unlisted one are far less insurmountable, they said, considering MTNL could always become a listed subsidiary of BSNL.

The Union Minister for Telecommunications, Mr Pramod Mahajan's remarks often indicate the Government's reluctance to let go of MTNL. ``Should we give others the lucrative part of our operations and keep places like Jabalpur and Bhagalpur? Is this good business? We must think about it,'' he said, at the recent Convergence seminar in the city last week.

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