Vietnam currently has around 15 million inactive mobile phone numbers out of the total number of 140 million mobile subscribers nationwide, and will recall them by September 30.

Inactive mobile phone numbers are numbers which are unused but still recorded on the mobile network. The existence of inactive numbers is a waste of the number resource, said Deputy Minister of Information and Communications Le Nam Thang.

Thang at a recent meeting required the Vietnam Telecommunications Authority to instruct telecom enterprises implement the plan which must be completed and reported to the ministry by next month-end.

According to Pham Hong Hai, head of the authority, the authority has just held a meeting with telecom enterprises, asking them to strictly manage pre-paid mobile phone subscribers, especially inactive ones. Any number which is not used in a certain period of time will be locked and recalled.

Under the regulation on management of mobile phones, those numbers which have been activated but not used will have one way locked after 60 days, two ways locked after 15 more days and will be recalled on the 105th day.

However, in reality some mobile networks have not complied with the regulation seriously, resulting in a high number of inactive numbers.

At the meeting between the authority and telecom enterprises, Nguyen Viet Dung, deputy director of Viettel Telecom, said that with numbers activated before January 1, 2013 and unused since then, telcos should determine a fixed day, suggestively September 1, to write off the accounts of such numbers to zero.

Meanwhile, according to Nguyen Dinh Chien, deputy director of MobiFone, inactive numbers are held by users, not agents or speculators. As a result, it is likely that there will be negative reaction from users if strong measures against the issue are taken.

However, Deputy Minister Thang asserted that network providers must recall inactive numbers on September 30 at the latest. Therefore, providers have to inform customers about this.