Number portability to be a reality by June '09

NEW DELHI, INDIA: IT and Telecom Minister, Government of India, A Raja said number portability will be reality by June 2009 in four metros in the country. And thereafter the facility would be extended in phases to the rest of the country.

“This policy decision will enable customers to change their service provider without changing their mobile numbers and thereby provide increased choice to the consumers,” the minister said while addressing the Economics Editors Conference 2008 here on Tuesday.

Meanwhile, the Department of Telecommunications (DoT) announced it is inviting tenders for providing Mobile Number Portability service.

The new service will encourage service providers to give better quality services at competitive rates so as to retain their customers, the minister pointed out.

He also said mergers acquisitions between new telecom operators will be allowed only after they have completed three years of operations after being issued licenses.

“The market share of the merged entity in the relevant market shall not be greater than 40 per cent either in terms of subscriber based separately for wireless as well as wireline subscriber base or in terms adjusted gross revenue,” A.Raja added.

Highlighting the pro-active policies of the present Government that helped all the three sectors of his ministry - namely Telecom, Posts and IT, the minister said the telecommunication sector in the country is now able to provide state-of-the-art world-class infrastructure at globally competitive tariffs and reduce the digital divide by extending connectivity to the unconnected areas.

“We are adding over 8 million subscribers per month and in the last month we have added more than 10 million subscribers,” said A.Raja.

“Handsets are being sold at a price which are within the reach of common man and has made this country one of the most sought after telecom manufacturing destination.”

The total number of connections has gone up from 142 million in March 2006 to 353 million in September 2008.  And the rural telephones have gone up from 18.5 millions in March 2006 to 105 million in September 2008. 

The minister also said that the auction of 3G and BWA spectrum would be held in January 2009.  MTNL will be launching services in December 2008 in Delhi and BSNL in January 2009 in Chennai. 

The Spectrum will be allotted through simultaneous ascending e-auction. And the Reserve Price for one block of Pan India spectrum is Rs. 2020 crore. On an average 5 blocks will be auctioned. 

The government expects to realize significantly higher amounts.

He also said the IT sector in India continues to maintain a healthy growth rate both in the IT software and IT enabled services as well as in the IT and Electronics hardware sectors, despite the global slowdown.