The math, laid out in full
India's Telecom Regulatory Authority (TRAI), under the Telecom Commercial Communications Customer Preference Regulations (TCCCPR), requires telemarketers to place promotional voice calls from a dedicated 140 series — a separate 1600 series is reserved for transactional and service calls. The goal: make a commercial call identifiable before you even pick up.
An Indian phone number has 10 digits. The 140 prefix occupies the first three; the remaining digits are free. The number of possible numbers behind that prefix is simply 10 to the power of the number of free digits.
The 140 series
140 — a single 3-digit prefix for all sectors placing promotional calls nationwide.
3-digit prefix → 10 − 3 = 7 free digits 10⁷ = 10,000,00010,000,000 numbers
No estimate, no approximation — a single national range, unlike France's twelve prefixes or Spain's one. You can redo the calculation yourself in ten seconds.
This figure describes a numbering plan, not a performance
10,000,000 isn't something an app "managed" to collect. It's what arithmetic gives you the moment you apply TRAI's public 140-series rule. Any app applying the same rule covers exactly the same total. Egidio included.
Why big numbers are easy
In this space, you'll regularly see impressive figures — millions, sometimes billions, of numbers or threats "covered." The calculation above shows where they come from.
A numbering range is an enumerable set: once you know its construction rule, you know its exact size without ever having observed a single call. Adding a 3-digit prefix to your coverage adds ten million numbers in one line of code. Multiplying a list by a numbering plan requires no intelligence, no data, and no particular engineering.
We say this because we do exactly the same thing, and it would be dishonest to present this coverage as an achievement. It's useful — it protects from the moment of install, without waiting for a number to be reported — but there's nothing exceptional about it.
The same work, in 22 countries
Egidio ships the ranges defined by each covered market's telecom regulator: 94 ranges across 22 countries. They don't all share the same legal nature, and the distinction is worth making honestly.
| Nature | What it is | Countries |
|---|---|---|
| Dedicated telemarketing | Ranges created specifically for large-scale commercial calls and messages — not individual use | India (TRAI), France (ARCEP), Spain (CNMC / SETID) |
| Premium-rate / value-added | Ranges that bill the caller, or that have historically been hijacked for callback scams and fake customer service | Germany, Saudi Arabia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, Egypt, UAE, Spain, United States, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Pakistan, Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Qatar, United Kingdom, Switzerland, Turkey |
India is therefore part of a small group of countries with ranges reserved exclusively for telemarketing — alongside it, France and Spain, both shipped in Egidio, and Chile (prefixes 600 and 809, mandatory since August 2025), not yet covered by our engine. Elsewhere, regulation more often targets premium-rate numbers instead. The full breakdown, prefix by prefix, is on the technical specs page.
Consumers can also opt out of all 140-series promotional calls by registering their preference on TRAI's Do Not Disturb (DND) registry — a separate, complementary mechanism to the range itself.
What a list of numbers can never do
Here's the limit, and it's structural: a scammer follows no numbering obligation. Regulated ranges cover declared telemarketing — the businesses that play by the rules. They don't cover fraud.
And a list, however large, only contains what someone has already seen. It can do nothing against a number used for the first time, never reported anywhere, that didn't exist yesterday.
What Egidio does on top of that, and why it changes the nature of the problem
Egidio doesn't just apply lists. It also watches for resemblance: a call from a number that closely matches one of your saved contacts is flagged as a possible impersonation attempt — the classic trick of mimicking a relative's or a bank's number by one or two digits.
This check relies on no list at all. It's built from your own contact list, which never leaves your phone. It therefore covers numbers nobody has ever reported, and that will never appear in any database — because they haven't been used yet.
That's the difference between a set you can count in advance, and a rule that produces its own coverage the moment the call arrives. The first only protects against the past.
The same reasoning applies to message content: Egidio doesn't just try to recognize text it has already seen, but the manipulation mechanism at work — fabricated urgency, borrowed authority, a fabricated link. These mechanisms survive a change of number, platform, or language.
Frequently asked questions
How many telemarketing numbers does India's 140 series cover?
10,000,000 exactly: a single national 3-digit prefix (140), leaving seven free digits — 10 to the power of 7.
Is blocking millions of numbers a sign of a better app?
Not necessarily. This total comes from a multiplication applied to a public list of prefixes: any app applying the same list gets the same figure. It describes India's numbering plan, not the quality of a detection engine.
Is the 140 series mandatory for promotional calls?
Yes, under TRAI's TCCCPR framework. A commercial call from a regular 10-digit number does not follow the rule — and should be treated as suspect.
What if a scammer doesn't use the 140 series?
That's the most common case. A fraudster follows no numbering obligation at all — which is exactly why protection can't rely solely on lists of known numbers.
Go further
- Sources: PIB — DoT allots separate numbering series for service and transactional voice calls · PIB — TRAI strengthens consumer protection with amendments to TCCCPR, 2018 · TRAI — TCCCPR framework · TRAI — advice to telemarketers · India's national numbering plan (10-digit numbers) · number ranges shipped in Egidio, detailed on the technical specs page.