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Telecom Commission approves use of mobile services in flights and ships in India

The Indian Telecom Commission has approved the proposal to allow the use of mobile phones in flights in India on Tuesday. With this approval, the users will now be able to make calls to mobile phone as well as landlines. These proposals were approved by the telecom secretary Aruna Sundararajan who chaired the commission.

The Telecom operators who have the telephony license will provide a new mobile number to the user which won’t require a SIM card for activation. This special number will only be activated via internet telephony app on user’s smartphone. TRAI had recommended this proposal of calling in flights last year in October. This will provide a new type of connectivity option to the consumers in India where the user won’t experience call drops.

TRAI MNP

This will allow the companies like Reliance Jio, BSNL, Airtel and other operators to provide a 10 digit number which will be any other mobile number. This number will be different from the user’s existing number and will be able to make calls via broadband.

Arvind Kumar, Advisor, TRAI commented on the approval of the proposal, “This will give more options to consumers, especially in areas where quality of service is an issue. These include places such as buildings and even homes where conventional telecom signals are weak while wi-fi availability is strong.”


Aruna Sundararajan also commented on the in-flight connectivity, “The in-flight connectivity (IFC) was approved by Telecom Commission (TC). It was decided to accept Trai’s views except that the satellites used for providing services should be Department of Space-approved satellite and the gateway should be in India. We would be operationalising this immediately.”

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Abhishek Bhatnagar

Abhishek Bhatnagar, a known technology blogger & YouTuber from India. A Software Engineer by qualification, now he works as the editor-In-Chief, Webmaster, & Managing Director at Gadgets To Use. He runs a number of other technology websites as well.