MITS gets nod for MNP phase-II roll out

NEW DELHI, INDIA: Despite controversies related to national security concerns and arrest of Ravi Inder Singh, former director, internal security at Ministry of Home Affairs, for allegedly helping MNP Interconnection Telecom Solutions (MITS), the company has been given final but conditional nod to roll out second phase of mobile number portability (MNP).

“Ministry of Home Affairs has given conditional approval to MITS for roll out of mobile number portability that will be implemented nationwide from January 20, 2011. Agreement for this approval was signed last week,” said R Chandrashekhar, Secretary, Department of Telecom in an interaction with CIOL.

MITS is a joint venture between Telcordia Technologies and Deepak Talwar Consultants. MITS was given license for implementing MNP in south and east zone of the country and there has been no change in the zones where the company has to implement MNP.

In April 2009, DoT had shortlisted two players for implementing MNP namely Syniverse Technologies and MITS. All the 22 telecom circles were equally divided among these two players for MNP roll out. Syniverse has started rolling out services in 11 circles from last  November 25, 2010. MITS has just started execution of its plan for rolling out MNP services.

The 11 circles where Syniverse Technologies has MNP license include Haryana, Delhi, Mumbai, Maharashtra, Gujarat, Himachal Pradesh, Jammu and Kashmir, Punjab, Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh (East) and Uttar Pradesh (West).

Rest of the 11 telecom circles are under license of MITS.