Telcos to meet govt on number porting issues

NEW DELHI, INDIA: Telecom operators have been called for a meeting by the Department of Telecom (DoT) to resolve problems faced by customers while porting their numbers from one network to another, Minister of State for Communications and IT Sachin Pilot said on Friday.

A close watch on the matter is being kept by Telecom Enforcement Resource and Monitoring (TERM) cells and based on the feedbacks received from the service providers and subscribers the companies have been called to resolve the issue, the minister said in a written reply to the Rajya Sabha.

Some of the problems faced by the customers are rejection of the port-out request stating reason as less than 90 days of activation even though the mobile phone numbers have worked for more than 90 days.

Non-disconnection of ported out number and non-updation of number portability database by donor in case of successfully ported out numbers is also a major problem.

The number portability service which allows mobile users to change their service providers without having to forgo their numbers was launched by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh earlier this year.

However, many customers had complained that their existing operators were creating problems while they attempted to switch to another network.