Telephone Numbers in India - Fixed (landline) Numbers

Fixed (landline) Numbers

Subscriber Trunk Dialling (STD) codes are assigned to each city/town/village, with the larger Metro cities having shorter area codes (STD codes), the shortest being 2 digits. For example,

• 11 - New Delhi, Delhi
• 22 - Mumbai, Maharashtra
• 80 - Bangalore, Karnataka
• 33 - Kolkata, West Bengal
• 44 - Chennai, Tamil Nadu
• 20 - Pune, Maharashtra
• 40 - Hyderabad, Andhra Pradesh
• 79 - Ahmedabad, Gujarat
• 20 - Pune, Maharashtra

Tier-2 Cities in India have STD code with 3 digits. For example,

• 141 - Jaipur, Rajasthan
• 422 - Coimbatore, Tamil Nadu
• 261 - Surat, Gujarat
• 265 - Vadodara, Gujarat
• 471 - Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala
• 484 - Kochi, Kerala
• 532 - Allahabad, Uttar Pradesh
• 512 - Kanpur, Uttar Pradesh
• 522 - Lucknow, Uttar Pradesh
• 542 - Varanasi, Uttar Pradesh
• 612 - Patna, Bihar
• 731 - Indore, Madhya Pradesh
• 755 - Bhopal, Madhya Pradesh
• 891 - Vizag, Andhra Pradesh
• 866 - Vijayawada, Andhra Pradesh
• 870 - Warangal, Andhra Pradesh
• 161 - Ludhiana, Punjab

In fact, Kanpur and Lucknow are the two cities between which the first STD call of the country was made.

A full list of area codes in India is available with BSNL.

Land line numbers are at most 8 digits long (usually in major metros). The total length of all phone numbers (STD code and the phone number) in India is constant at 10 digits, for example 7513200000 signifies a STD code i.e. 751 Gwalior & the phone number 3200000. Due to the availability of multiple operators offering fixed line services (either over wire or wireless), there is an operator-code for each telephone number, which is the first digit in the phone number. These are:

• 2 - BSNL and MTNL
• 3 - Reliance Communications
• 4 - Bharti Airtel
• 6 - Tata Indicom

Thus, a number formatted as 020-30303030 means a fixed-line Reliance number in Pune, while 011-20000198 is an MTNL fixed line in Delhi and 033-45229320 is an Airtel number in Kolkata, and 0758-2221434 is a BSNL number from Sagar.

No prefix is required to call from one landline to another in the same STD area. A prefix of "0+STD code" is required to dial from a landline phone in one STD code area to another. A prefix of "0+STD code" is required to dial from a mobile phone in India to any landline number, irrespective of STD area.

For example, to call a landline number in Indore, one would have to dial

• from a land line in Indore: only the required phone number
• from a land line in Mumbai: 0731 and then the required phone number
• from a mobile phone anywhere in India: 0731 and then the required phone number

There are some exceptions to this general rule for STD areas falling close to each other (within a radius of 200 kilometre), where "0" can be replaced with "95" e.g. to dial Delhi from Gurgaon, one dials 9511+landline number. This feature was stopped with effect from 00:00 hours of 10 March 2009, as per Department of Telecommunications memorandum dated 9 February 2009.