MTN Nigeria, has  announced changes in its recharge activation and data bundle codes for customers in compliance with the Nigerian Communications Commission's harmonised short codes (HSC) for providing certain services to telecom consumers in Nigeria. This was revealed after consumers received messages from MTN stating the changes in codes for airtime recharge and data subscription.

The message reads, "Dear Customer, You can now buy data bundles using *312# instead of *131#. We encourage you to start using the new code for your convenience. Thank you for choosing MTN."

The telecoms operator also changed its code used by customers to recharge their lines from *555*rechargepin# to *311*rechargepin# as stated in the NCC short codes.

The message reads, "Dear Customer, this is to inform you of a change in our recharge activation code. You can now recharge your lines using *311*rechargepin# instead of *555*rechargepin#. We encourage you to start using the new code for your convenience. Thank you for choosing MTN."

In March, the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) approved the harmonised short codes for all mobile networks in Nigeria. The harmonised shortcodes (HSC) will work across all mobile networks in the country.

This means that the code for checking airtime balance is the same across Airtel, 9mobile and Glo mobile networks for the same function.

It will be recalled that the NCC set a deadline of 17 May, 2023, for all mobile networks to fully migrate from hitherto diverse short codes to the harmonised codes.

However, the old and new HSC will run concurrently up until 17 May 2023, when all telecom networks are expected to have completely migrated to full implementation of the new codes.

The period between March and 17 May 2023 was provided by the NCC to enable telecom consumers get accustomed to the new codes for various services.

So far, only 13 of the harmonized short codes have been approved across all networks by the NCC. These include 300 for Call Centre/Help Desk on all mobile networks; 301 for voice Mail Deposit; 302 for Voice Mail Retrieval; 303 for Borrow Services; 305 for Stop Service; 310 for Check Balance, and 311 for Credit Recharge.

Also, the code for for Data Plan across networks is now 312 while 321 is for Share Services, while 323 is for Data Plan Balance. The code, 996, is now for Verification of Subscriber Identity Module (SIM) Registration/NIN-SIM Linkage.

Additionally, the code, 2442, is for Do-Not-Disturb (DND) unsolicited messaging complaint management, while the common code, 3232, is also retained for Porting Services, otherwise called Mobile Number Portability.

With the HSC, over 220 million active mobile consumers in the country can easily access services across all networks using the same codes.