Telecom enterprises will have to hand over 70 percent of the income they earned from selling special cell phone numbers to the nation's coffers, the National Communication Commission (NCC) announced yesterday.

According to the NCC, the phone carriers got about NT$80 million (S$3.44 million) from the auction and the sale of special cell phone numbers each year. The numbers are mostly those with numerals homophonous to Chinese lucky words.

The NCC pointed out that phone numbers are public properties allocated to the telecom companies for free. The request for a 70 percent cut from the sales of these numbers will not add to the companies' burden because the numbers cost them nothing.

The amendment of the special number sales regulations will be finished soon and be implemented as soon as the beginning of next year, NCC officials said. The trend of capitalizing on lucky numbers started in Hong Kong, where a lucky cell phone or license plate number can grab as much as tens of millions of Taiwan dollars in auction.

The most common lucky number in both Taiwan and Hong Kong is eight, which in Cantonese sounds similar to the word "fa" (pronounced "fah" and means "to prosper").

The highest grossing phone cell phone number in Taiwan, 0988-888-888, helped Chunghwa Telecom earn NT$6.3 million from auction.

The number that ends with seven 9s cashed in NT$1.68 million (9, pronounced "jiu," is homophonous to the word "jiu" which means "long-lasting" in both Mandarin and Cantonese).

The number 168 itself is considered lucky for its similarity to the Cantonese phrase "yi-lu-fa" ("yut-luk-fah," meaning "prosperous all the way"). The number that ends with the numbers 168168 brought in almost NT$1 million.

The belief of the power of special numbers also goes the other way. The number 4 ("si," homophonous to "si", or death) is a number some Taiwanese would like to avoid. Many hotels in Taiwan have no fourth floor.

--China Post/ANN