MNP woos subscribers, disappoints GSM lobby

Bhaskar Hazarika

NEW DELHI, INDIA: Mobile Number Portability (MNP), which the government announced on Monday, might have failed to woo the opposing GSM operators lobby, but has brought smiles to the millions of mobile subscribers across the country.

Keeping aside the legal tangles between the GSM lobby and the government, number portability is likely to woo the subscribers to a great extent.

“Now my operator won't be able to hold me for ransom. If I'm not satisfied with the quality of service, I will be able to change my operator. I hope MNP will stand by its claims and improve the quality of service of operators,” Rajat Agarwal, chief mobi, cellpassion.com, said.

According to experts, number portability will offer subscribers the freedom to retain the same mobile phone number even if they swapping operators for better services.

“I wanted to have my own Chennai number, while I shifted to Delhi eight months back. My Chennai mobile ends with 143, which represents I LOVE YOU, gifted by my girlfriend. If MNP was implemented in India, I could retain the same number,” an executive from a Gurgaon-based company said.

Government announcement

The Department of Telecom (DoT) has announced to introduce mobile number portability in the four metros -- Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata and Chennai -- in the first phase. Announcing the introduction of number portability, A. Raja, union minister for Communications and IT, said that the facility is likely to be available to mobile subscribers by April 2008.

According to the guidelines, all the Universal Access Service License (UASL) and Cellular Mobile Service Providers (CMSP) will implement the number portability.

DoT said in a statement, “the mobile operators, through neutral third party, shall establish logically centralized database. The cost of the database shall be borne proportionately by each operator.”

Operators will adopt Central Clearing House, preferably electronic processing approach, for processing porting requests. Cost of such Clearing House shall be borne by all operators. The neutral third party will administer such Clearing House. In case of porting the number the customer shall approach the recipient operator.

The department said that the method of tariff transparency would be decided by TRAI after due consultations and also considering the cost aspects of different solutions. TRAI will issue various relevant regulations in this regard.

“The upgradation of their network shall be borne by the operators. Common setup costs such as Number Portability Administration Centre (NPAC), Clearing House, shall be borne by the operators based on the subscriber market share,” the statement said.

The government will review the introduction of the MNP in A circle in April 2008.

CDMA and GSM operators speak

The Association of Unified Telecom Service Providers of India (AUSPI) has welcomed the decision of the government for introduction of number portability in the four metros in the initial phase.

“Number portability is an important and effective tool for ensuring effective competition and improved quality of service in the mobile telecom service sector which will ultimately benefit the subscribers at large,” S.C. Khanna, secretary general, AUSPI said.

However, the Cellular Operators Association of India (COAI) seemed to be unhappy with the government’s decision on implementation of MNP.

“MNP is being introduced to benefit a select operator desirous of entering the GSM segment. MNP should also cover fixed line operators. There was a need for increased competition in the fixed line segment where 90 per cent of subscribers are with only state-run BSNL,” COAI said in a statement.

Close to two years after the telecom regulator submitted the recommendations on implementation of number portability in the country, the government had finally announced the implementation of number portability.

The regulator had suggested implementation of MNP in the country by April 2007. The recommendations were submitted by TRAI in March 2006.

However, the introduction of this service will boost the dual-handset market in India with subscribers willing to switch from GSM to CDMA, and vice-versa.

What is MNP?

Mobile number portability allows subscribers to retain the same phone number while they switch service providers. It enables the subscribers to change the service provider without losing the current phone number.

The impact of implementing number portability is quality of service, customer satisfaction, competition for launching various schemes and bouquet of value-added services.

Pakistan had introduced mobile number portability in March 2007. The Nigeria Communications Commission, NCC has also announced to introduce mobile number portability before the end of 2007. Israel is also planning to implement MNP by December 2007.

Singapore was the first country to implement MNP in 1997, followed by Hong Kong in 1999, Australia in 2001, South Korea in 2004 and Taiwan in 2005.

It may be mentioned here that Singapore had mobile penetration of 157 per cent when number portability was introduced.

Depending upon countries, the request for porting takes a minimum of 20 minutes to five working days.