BANGALORE, INDIA: It has been a long wait for India's mobile phone subscribers for the much touted mobile number portability to come in. The country, which has been dwelling on the hopes of becoming MNP-ready for over three years now,  remains so even today.

MNP to miss March 31 deadline too?

The whole industry (including telcos, MNP service providers, government etc), except for the the consumer segment, seems to be scheming against it for various hidden motives.

On one hand, where telcos, in the anticipation of a mass churn resulting in the loss of subscribers and market share, are hesitating to move on to MNP.

"The operators are yet to upgrade their networks to be MNP compatible," says Anubhuti Belgaonkar, senior analyst, Ovum.

However, Sanjay Kasturia, director, India Subcontinent, Syniverse Technologies, notes that although mobile service providers often have initial concerns about a potential increase in churn, this has not turned out to be a problem in previous MNP implementations in other parts of the world.

On the other hand, alarms were raised over the six-month period deadline kept for the MNP roll out, when scheduled at December 31, 2009. The two major telecom players, BSNL and MTNL stated that upgrading legacy networks, testing the technology and systems, and tweaking billing systems and tariff plans require a lot of time.

"The Department of Telecom (DoT)," adds Anubhuti, "originally kept a six-month implementation period for the MNP operators. Whereas, studies from other countries suggest that it typically takes a longer period to successfully test and implement MNP. There seems to be insufficient planning from DoT's end too."

Moreover, the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI), and MNP service providers (Syniverse and Telecordia's MNP Interconnection) are at loggerheads over mobile number porting charges. The former fixed the MNP charges at Rs..19, whereas the two service providers wanted it to be anywhere between Rs. 75-200, resulting in a sine die.

"Syniverse and Telcordia are also understood to be behind schedule for the implementation and have voiced concern regarding the price cap of Rs. 19 for porting numbers. Moreover, the MNP operators are yet to complete their part of the MNP preparation," adds Anubhuti.

As if this wasn't enough, Telcordia, one of the MNP service providers, was dragged into controversy over reports that the US-based Telcordia, a joint venture (JV) between US-based Telcordia Technologies and Indian firm Deepak Talwar Consultants, had no experience of operating the MNP service. Moreover, The Home Ministry also raised concerns over Telcordia's presence in Pakistan. The issues are still under probe.

Not many saw the MNP implementation even close to happening, when the Department of Telecom (DoT) set December 31, 2009 as the deadline to roll out MNP in metro and Category A circles. Now the pan-India roll out, that too by March 31, 2010, seems to be a bigger challenge and not happening.

However, Syniverse likes to differ.

"Although porting initially was required to first be implemented in metro and Category-A circles, the operators in all circles still needed to be MNP ready to receive the updated porting information from the clearing houses in order to ensure proper call routing. With the new pan-India approach, it actually becomes easier for operators to offer the services by making all necessary changes and configurations in their IT and network infrastructures at the same time," avers Kasturia.

Though Syniverse thought it best to leave it to DoT to decide whether or not to roll out MNP in March end, Anubhuti sums up it as highly unlikely that the roll would happen by March 31, since there are still limited co-ordination between different stakeholders even now.

Moreover, BSNL has already informed the DoT that it may miss even the March 31 deadline if it has not got the security clearance for importing the needed equipment at the earliest.

"In all probability, a nationwide implementation will stretch beyond March 2010," she notes.

In the end MNP will also falls under the 3G, WiMAX and VoIP's list for India's prolonged wait!