That is correct. They are grouped as Central Number. 01x-6 is also a Central Number. Meanwhile, 01x-8 is tagged to Sabah and Sarawak.

But since a few years ago, none of the telco sell their numbers according to their geographic tagging anymore. However, they have not removed the geographic tagging of the phone number. You can see that in your Maxis postpaid itemised statement.

One is less likely to get this kind of spam SMS if you’ve been using the same number for a very long time. Almost all newly signed up numbers are more likely to have this issue as they have been recycled too many times and that happens to number of any prefix.

I just realized that my Maxis Fibre backup 4G SIM has the service number with 012 prefix. My friend’s MaxisONE Go WiFi SIM is a 012 number too. Neither SIM can make call though. We didn’t choose the number. They are assigned randomly.

Based on this scenario, there is no basis to the saying that all 012 number is reserved only to Maxis Postpaid now but all subject to availability. Even tablet plan may come with a random 012 number.

014 is also shared by Celcom. Basically it is -
014-2 (Maxis)
014-3 (Digi)
014-5 (Celcom)
014-6 (Digi)
014-7 (Maxis)
014-8 (Celcom)
014-9 (Digi)

Only 012, 013, 016, 017 and 019 prefixes are telco specific. The rest are all shared.