Telecom service providers can now use special characters such and hash for value added services. Department of telecommunications has endorsed this and made this permission came into effect from Thursday.

Special characters such as # and * are generally used by top operators who provide various kinds of services all over the world. Hence, National numbering plan did not permit the use of these special characters by telecom service providers.

Trai is the first to permit operators to use special characters. Trai wants to streamline the national numbering plan.