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Religion, ego, vanity drive people to spend dollops on phone numbers
Digital desires
HOTTEST NUMBERS: 00000, 11111, 22222, 00001, 00002, 50000, 12345, 00786, 00111, 00151
WHAT COUNTS: Numerology, birth date combos DD/MM/YY, car number, house number, 10-digit numbers that add up to 9.7,or 1 or a personal lucky digit; Same last five digits for all users in a family also popular; Repeat of first five numbers (service numbers on many networks)
WHAT DOESN’T: Numbers ending with 3, 13, 666 not preferred
Recently A hotel in Goa saw 25 mobile phone dealers gather for some fun and frolic. The highlight of the meet was actress Perizaad Zorabian, till attention shifted to the auction of special ‘golden’ phone numbers.
With the auctioneer egging the crowd on, a dealer bid Rs 40,000 for a specific number that ended in ‘11111’. But that’s not the final price. The dealer is sure that he will sell the number in the sugar rich Kolhapur-Solapur belt of Western Maharashtra for at least double the amount.
But that’s conservative Maharashtra for you. In brash and booming North India, the rage is 10-digit numbers that add up to the number 9. Politicians prize numbers that add up to 1 or 7.
Numerology plays a crucial role here. Religious sentiments, ego trips or sheer vanity also drive people to fork out dollops of money for their favourite numbers.
For muslims, the all time favourite remains any number ending with 786. (Conversely, there is a lot of superstition attached with having a number that ends with 666).
Another dealer approached the promoter of a mobile network and offered him a whopping six figures for a number. The last five digit in question: 10101.
A mobile phone industry executive recalls that a number ending with ‘50000’ was sold for Rs 90,000 a couple of years ago to a diamond trader.
While it is tough to find out the highest amount paid for a number, sources say that one South Indian poultry farmer paid Rs 1.5 lakh for fulfilling his 11111 fetish (all his Mercedes cars are numbered 11111).
It is not just these special series that see bidding. Recently, a subscriber switched from his long time operators after paying a rival dealer Rs 8,000.
All this for ‘98xxx-82288’. Some others pay to get number pairs, where the first five digits are the same as the last five. This is easier said than done, as the operators reserve numbers like 98110-98110 (Hutch Delhi help line) for their use.
But, it is not money alone that gets you these numbers. Like other spheres of life, here too the ‘VIP’ factor plays a big role in determining who gets what.
In Jammu & Kashmir, the launch of mobile phone services last year saw a bevy of politicians, bureaucrats and police officers exert considerable weight on the two operators, BSNL and Airtel. Sources say that a top politician, a former chief minister, has one particular number that ends with 786. So do others in his family.
In fact, the fetish for numbers extends nationwide. An executive with a national mobile operator had this to say. “Request come in from all sorts of people for all kinds of numbers. In the past, when coverage had not expanded as much, the premiums were even more. Premiums have dipped a bit, as there are more operators and number series options now. But, people still pay for bagging prized number.
